


The War at Home

by speakingwosound (sev313)



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Dreams and Nightmares, M/M, Mad Scientists, Military Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-17 02:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16966353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sev313/pseuds/speakingwosound
Summary: “In the military, it’s all ‘follow the leader, left, right, left, right off the cliff’ but-” Lovett shrugs. “Jon did choose you.  I shouldn’t have expected orthodoxy.”Or, the one where Lovett’s an eccentric tech billionaire and Tommy’s his new head of security.





	The War at Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nighimpossible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nighimpossible/gifts).



> Written for nighimpossible for Yuletide 2018. Your prompts gave me so much to work with, and I hope this hits your high points!
> 
> A couple of warnings: Warning for military-level violence, minor off-screen original character death, and elements of PTSD. Tommy is definitely suffering from the effects of his time in Iraq and is struggling to fit back into civilian life. If that is triggering, please be safe and click the back button.

__**New York Post**  
Eccentric Billionaire Says Lucrative Defense Contract Was “A Mistake”  
October 16 | 4:43 PM

_President of Lovett Industries and New York’s most eccentric tech entrepreneur Jonathan Ira Lovett has doubled down on his anti-war rhetoric in recent weeks._

_At a reception for New York’s Titans of Industry Event, Lovett says that he “stands by” a speech he made at last month’s Future of Technology conference._

[video below]

_Lovett patented his first weapon as an undergraduate at Williams College. As a senior, he won a half-a-million-dollar defense contract and incorporated Lovett Industries a year later. The company’s weapons have been used in every major war since 9/11._

Jonathan Lovett, pictured with Head of Public Outreach, Jonathan Favreau, leaving the Future of Technology Gala

_In recent years, however, Lovett Industries has pulled back from the war effort. During his Future of Technology keynote, Lovett made a shock announcement that his company would be “turning down all future military contracts to focus on the effects of climate change.”_

_Although the DOJ turned down a request for comment, public records show that Lovett Industries has fulfilled and terminated all government contracts as of September 31st. “This isn’t a decision we took lightly,” Favreau told the Post. “Lovett Industries is focused on ensuring that we leave the best possible planet for the next generation.”_

_The announcement came as a shock. Lovett Industries is operated almost entirely on military contract, and questions remain about the future of the company and its three-hundred employees._

_Still, “I stand by what I said,” Lovett told reporters at last night’s Titans of Industry gala. “I should never have developed that damn bomb.” Lovett was referring to the GLU-792, which is the latest and most deadly bomb in the US military’s formidable arsenal._

_Future will tell how successful this pivot to anti-war technology will be._

_**File Under: Lovett Industries, Politics, US Military, War, New York** _

“We have started our descent into New York’s JFK International Airport” the stewardess’ voice crackles. “Please shut down all large electronics and restore your seats to their upright positions.”

Tommy clicks out of the article and shuts his laptop. He closes his eyes and does not watch their descent into New York.

***

"Tommy!" Jon waves, his long arm stretching frantically over the crowd of people at JFK. "Tommy!"

Tommy adjusts his duffle bag on his shoulder and pulls at the hem of his basic, light blue polo shirt. It still feels strange, even six months after being discharged, to walk through an airport in anything but his combat boots and desert camouflage. In uniform, the seas part and people side-eye him with a mix of awe and fear. In his civies, he has to push through the throng of other passengers coming in from Dubai and London and Cincinnati, stepping on feet and elbowing ribs so he can make it to Jon.

Jon smiles as he gets close, the same gap-toothed grin that has haunted Tommy's dreams for over two years, now. "Jon," Tommy says, breathless and a little grateful as he reaches out. Jon laughs, sounding so familiar that Tommy's knees shake a little as Jon pulls him into a hug.

Jon feels warm and softer than Tommy remembers, the private sector settling into his shoulders and his hips. It looks good on him, and Tommy tries to re-memorize the feel of Jon against him in the short space of time before Jon pulls away.

"Welcome to New York," Jon offers, ironically, reaching for Tommy's duffle bag. "It's a bit of a shithole but-" He shrugs, grinning like, over the course of a few short months, he's adopted this very shithole. "That's why we're trying to change it, right?"

" _You're_ trying to change it," Tommy corrects as he squeezes through the mass of people and tries not to flinch. "I need to pay my rent."

"You," Jon grins, "needed to get out of your mother's basement. You haven't thanked me for that yet, by the way."

"I haven't decided if I should thank you yet." Tommy steps past Jon into the waiting SUV. Black. Unmarked. Meant to be impressive, if Tommy can still read Jon's embarrassed smirk like he used to.

"He's worth it," Jon promises, as he climbs in behind Tommy and lets the driver shut his door. "You'll see."

***

Tommy dreams of the desert. He dreams of great, white stretches of sand, as far as his eyes can see. He dreams of pale skin and blond hair and khaki canvas. He dreams of white noise in his ears, long streams of coded Arabic over the radio, interrupted by the crackle and pop of opposition forces listening in. He dreams of Nazanin's small hand, the color of her skin and her bright, shining smile reminding him so much of Jon's. He dreams of reaching out for her, his fingers sliding against hers. Never far enough. Never fast enough.

Tommy wakes on a gasp, his lungs filling with cool, stale air. Slowly, he remembers where he is. The fancy hotel room in lower Manhattan, with its pristine white sheets and ruffled bedskirt and daily maid service.

Tommy grabs the quilt and a pillow and curls up on the floor next to the bed.

***

“One cream, half a sugar.”

“Uh.” Tommy accepts the large cup of coffee thrust at him as he enters Lovett Industries. It’s housed in a large, gleaming, glass building on 7th Avenue, with a giant American eagle gracing its façade. “Thanks.”

“Jon said it’s how you take your coffee.” The woman – young, younger than Tommy, with full, dark hair and long, dark fingers and beautiful eyes that she has focused on her phone – says without looking up. “If you’d like it another way, please let me know and I’ll add it to your file.”

“This is fine,” Tommy tells her, then, as she snorts, amends, “this is good. Just as I like it.”

“Good.” She makes one last note on her slim, opaque glass phone, and looks up. “I like to start with our best foot forward. I’m Tanya Somanader. I run recruitment and PR around here.”

“Tommy Vietor.” Tommy takes her hand. Her handshake is good. Firm.

“I know.” She laughs, covering her mouth and ruining the image. “Jon’s been talking about you for weeks. He’s sorry he can’t meet you, but, the New York press is insatiable.”

“The worst,” he agrees.

“Yeah.” Her eyes gleam and she winks at him as she swipes her badge and lets them through the extensive security protocols. “But it’s fun to make them sweat.”

Despite himself, Tommy laughs.

“So.” Tanya stops in front of a large, glassed corner office. Out of one window, Tommy can see the Statue of Liberty. Out of the other, an even skyline where the World Trade Centers should be. “This is your office. And this-” she shoves a binder into his arms “should keep you busy until Jon is free. If you have any questions, ask someone who knows something.”

“Ahh.” Tommy juggles the binder and the large coffee that’s still hot enough to burn his fingers. The collar of his black security shirt is pulling tight against his neck. “Thanks.”

“I’m kidding.” She smiles, her laughter jingling through the building and, for one bright, brief moment, Tommy is back in the Iraqi desert, Nazanin’s hand on his arm as she makes him try a small, juicy plum from the market. “I can answer any questions you have. I’ll check back in a few hours to give you a tour.”

Tommy nods and, as she’s at the door, asks, “you have a file on me?”

She turns her head, brushing her hair off her neck so he can see the strength of her shrug. “Of course we do.” She raises one, arched eyebrow. “And it has more than your coffee preferences in it.”

Tommy shivers a little, but before he can push, she’s gone, the soft shuffle of her flats disappearing down the opulent marble hallway.

Tommy sits at his ridiculously ergonomic chair and pulls the binder towards him.

***

“Hey.”

Tommy looks up from the thick binder of death threats to see Jon in the doorway, a tablet tucked under his armpit. His hair’s a little disheveled, like he’s been running his fingers through it all morning, and his eyes are dark as they’re trained on the note in Tommy’s hand.

Jon smiles, but it’s brittle and staid. “The boss wants to meet you.”

Tommy puts down the note – a particularly nasty anti-gay, pro-war threat spelled out in magazine-print letters that is all the more threatening for its Pulp Fiction-esque juvenility – and grabs his suit jacket. “What does he know about me?” He asks, as he follows Jon out of his office and down the hallway.

Jon glances away, at the row of framed photos lining the hallway. The Lovett from the _Post_ article and Tommy’s brief Google search, shaking hands with all the world’s most fearless leaders, accepting a ceremonial doctorate from MIT, standing in a construction hat next to the hole in the ground that became this monstrous skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan.

Jon swallows. “He knows we worked together in Iraq.”

“And?”

“And,” Jon looks at the soft, impractical canvas shoes on his feet, “he doesn’t know you’re here.”

Tommy stops in his tracks. “ _Jon_.”

Jon flinches and slows down, but doesn’t stop walking. “I know, I know, but Lovett thinks he can take care of himself, and-” Jon shrugs, his shoulders slumping the way they used to on the worst nights in Iraq when, drowning in amateur hooch and the worst days’ memories, he’d look up at the desert stars stretching endlessly in all direction and question, quietly, the validity of his endless optimism. “Well, you’ve read the threats.”

Tommy thinks about the death threats spilling out across the desk back in his office. Some of them clearly amateur, but a good number scarily lucid about Lovett’s anti-war rhetoric and terrifyingly attuned to Lovett Industry’s security protocols. “I have,” he nods.

“Shit.” Jon stops as the hallway opens into a large, spacious space with expansive ceilings and a glass ceiling just asking for an attack. “So, they are serious then?”

Tommy raises an eyebrow as he glances around for the tell-tale red lights of a security system. He doesn’t see any. “You knew that before you hired me.”

“I was hoping I was being cautious.” Jon shrugs, then turns and flashes his brightest, least sincere smile at the young man seated behind an overly-large glass desk. “Hey, Elijah. He ready for us?”

Elijah taps his finger against a digital calendar on the screen that covers the surface of his desk before he glances up, his eyes settling on Tommy. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Jon takes a deep breath, says “no” on the exhale.

Elijah chuckles. “He just got off the phone with Ecuador. You can go in.”

Jon pushes the door open and Tommy follows, entering mid-rant.

“… asshole doesn’t think I can speak Spanish. Doesn’t even have the decency to wait to bitch me out before I’m off the phone.”

“Moreno’s an asshole,” Jon agrees, as he closes the door behind Tommy and motions towards him. “This is Tommy. Do you remember-? I’ve talked about him. He was looking for a job and I thought we could use some security around here and-”

Lovett keeps reading, his curls falling into his eyes as he makes a mark in what looks like a very old and fragile manuscript. “Tommy? From Iraq, Tommy?”

“- he’s your new bodyguard,” Jon finishes.

Lovett marks the spot in his book with his index finger and looks up, brushing his curls out of his eyes with the other. He tilts his head, smiling with his cheeks, which does nothing to hide the deep, dark circles under his eyes. He stands, and he’s shorter than Tommy imagined he would be, but he’s wearing the same bright pink and yellow neon sneakers he was in the Titans of Industry speech.

Lovett’s eyes narrow. “I don’t need a bodyguard.”

Tommy holds up the manila folder he’s filled with just the most frightening and possible of the threats. “You kind of do.”

Lovett’s eyes light on him for just a moment – and for just that moment, Tommy feels the full force of Lovett’s attention and he understands the tide of Lovett’s charisma – and then they slide away. Tommy’s body feels cold at the loss.

“I’m a billionaire,” Lovett says, with a false shrug of his shoulders. “People have always hated me.”

“For your money,” Jon argues. He crosses his arms across his chest, hugging his tablet to himself. “Not for being who you are.”

Lovett snorts. “A few of them hated me for being me.”

“Not like this.” Tommy opens the folder and pulls out the top one, stepping forward to place it on Lovett’s desk. At Lovett’s feet, a small, golden dog barks at him without getting up.

“This is Pundit. Her bark is worse than her bite. Usually.” His eyes speed across the page. “What am I looking at?”

Tommy clears his throat and folds his hands behind his back. In the military, the legitimate need for security had been a given. He wasn’t trained to have to convince people of its use. “The signature, there-” Tommy points towards the bottom of the page, and Lovett’s eyes follow his arm to the spot. “I recognize it.”

Lovett takes a deep breath, his chest moving under his evolution t-shirt. Then he shoves the note back at Tommy. “If you’re my new head of security, shouldn’t you deal with it?”

Tommy’s eyebrow goes up and he glances back at Jon, who shrugs smugly. “Does that mean-”

“Yes, yes, you’re hired.” Lovett glares at Jon. “Jon runs things around here anyway, apparently.”

“You hired me to make sure the company’s transition goes smoothly,” Jon shrugs, easily. “Keeping you alive is part of things running smoothly. Just one man’s opinion, but-”

He catches Lovett’s eyes and an entire conversation flows silently between them. Tommy’s heart thuds and his chest aches with how casual and practiced it is.

Lovett shrugs, “an opinion I trust,” and sits back in his chair, pulling his dog into his lap and turning his attention back to his book like Tommy was an unfortunate annoyance that he’s already forgotten about.

Jon squeezes Tommy’s shoulder, his grin wide and smug, as he pulls Tommy out of the office.

***

Tommy spends the afternoon reading through Lovett Industry’s security protocols - they have few - and Lovett’s personal death threats - he has many. He’s scribbling designs on the tablet Tanya had given him after lunch when Jon pokes his head back around the office door. 

His hair is gelled down and his voice is light, but his eyes are as tired and worried as they were earlier. “How’s it looking?”

“Terrible.” Tommy motions towards the tablet. “How has no one died yet?”

“A question I ask myself every day.” Jon shrugs. “Come on, grab your coat. I need a burger. And some alcohol.”

Tommy glances down at the binder of security protocols he still has to go through, but Jon’s eyes are dark and brown and Tommy’s never been able to deny him before, he’s not about to start now. “Yeah, okay.” He grabs the tablet and the puffy coat his mother bought him as a ‘welcome back to the frozen tundra’ present, and follows Jon out the door.

They stop at a pub around the corner. The bartender greats Jon with a grin and motions them in as he asks “how’s the boss?”

“Good,” Jon grins, grabbing a menu and passing it to Tommy. “Working late.”

The bartender laughs a chest-deep laugh. “I’ll pack up his regular before you go?”

“I appreciate it.” Jon motions between them. “Two beers and a couple shots of Jack. Whatever you’ve got on tap.”

The bartender nods. “For your friend?”

“Oh.” Tommy glances up from the menu’s unpriced items, eyes widening at the $20 pints. “A, ahh, caesar salad. Small.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “It’s on the house. He’ll take a burger. Rare. No onions. Cheddar?” Tommy nods, numbly, and Jon grins. “Cheddar.”

“How did you-?”

“Remember your burger order?” Jon laughs, his shoulders shaking under the thin, loose fabric of his button-up, which is not buttoned nearly high enough. “You only talked about it every day over there.”

“Yeah,” Tommy swallows. “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”

Jon nods, reaching for their shots and holding Tommy’s out. “Welcome to New York.” He downs his, the muscles of his throat working around it, before he drops his chin and coughs into his wrist. “Fuck, okay. Lay it on me. How bad is it, really?”

Tommy’s stomach burns with the whiskey, he tells himself, as he hands over the tablet, with a few of the worst threats scanned and pulled up. “There are some seriously fucked up people pissed at him, Jon.”

Jon flinches as he takes the tablet, gingerly. Jon’s always had the worst poker face - Tommy’d lost track of the bottles of beer and packets of cigarettes and USB drives of movies that he’d won off him in Iraq - and Tommy watches the flickers of fear and flashes of regret pass his face as he reads. 

Jon stops halfway through, placing the tablet on the bar and waving his shot glass for another. “He’s really very easy to love,” he promises, as the bartender refills both their glasses immediately. “Once you get to know him.”

Tommy thinks about the gruff, dismissive, slightly-manic scientist. He thinks about Lovett’s smile, the way it spreads across his cheeks and settles into the crows feet at his temples. He thinks about the way Jon smiles with his eyes, soft and gentle, at just the mention of Lovett’s name.

Tommy swallows and argues, “these people don’t know him,” rather than asking, _how well do you know him?_

Jon reaches for his second shot, downing it without looking at Tommy. “This is my fault. He’s just- he’s doing the right thing. I _pushed him_ to do the right thing.”

Tommy reaches for his beer, bypassing his own shot. He can’t meet Jon’s eyes. “You didn’t use to think non-intervention was the right thing.”

Jon sighs, leaning back in his seat and finally meeting Tommy’s eyes. His own are flecked with gold. Tommy used to think, ridiculously, that Jon’s eyes were the stars made manifest under a foreign sky, back when his life had had all and no meaning.

“The costs are so high.” Jon takes a long sip of his beer. He doesn't look away. “You know that better than anyone.”

Tommy’s hand feels warm, the ghost of Nazanin’s fingers in his palm. “The costs of not being there are too high,” he counters. “You know that, too.”

Jon winces. “I don’t know, Tommy. I really don’t. I never did.”

“That’s-” _true enough_ , Tommy thinks, remembering the hundreds of arguments, just like this one, that they’d had, when everything had felt fixed and everything had felt possible. When the sand stretched out as far as their toes could reach and Tommy had been too terrified to reach for his hand. “You were _there_. You know how important our work was. Is.”

“I was there,” Jon shrugs. “And it was _bad_ , come on, Tommy, you know how bad it was. If it wasn’t for you-” Tommy’s chest aches- “I don’t know that I would have made it out.”

“It was,” Tommy admits, quietly. “But that’s why we should do something to make it better.”

Jon snorts. “That’s why we should do something to end it.”

Tommy shakes his head, grimly. “It can’t end.”

“It can.” Jon leans forward, his beer sloshing over the edges of his glass and spilling across his fingertips. “It really can. We just need to _want_ it to end.”

Jon has always been the most optimistic man Tommy has ever known. He has charisma oozing out his ears and bold ideas that sound beautiful and wonderful and- Tommy knows just how perfect _too_ perfect can be. “That’s a really nice pipe dream. Hopefully it doesn’t get anyone killed.”

“Enough people have died already,” Jon agrees, his eyes dark, as the bartender brings their burgers over and leaves a third, bagged and wrapped, next to Jon’s elbow. Jon smiles at him. “Hey, Joe, can you turn on the Celtics game.”

Joe shakes his head, chuckling as he points the remote at the TVs.

Tommy rolls his eyes, but bites into the burger. It’s perfectly cooked, as rare as rare can be in the middle of New York City, and he grabs onto Jon’s change of subject like a lifeline. “Over under on 50 games this season?”

Jon snorts and Tommy watches the trickle of pickle juice at the corner of his mouth before he dabs at it with a napkin. “If they get 30 I’ll be grateful. $50 on it?”

“Deal.”

***

Tommy dreams of an oasis. 

He dreams of the desperate, dry feeling on his tongue. He dreams of days stretching into nights of hard cots and thin mattresses, of MREs and hand-washing rough khaki, of letters from home and sand in his hair, under his fingernails, between his toes.

He dreams of Nazanin’s laughter, like the rippling waves of water after years of dehydration. He dreams of her voice, high and vibrant like the green leaves of a palm tree after months of monochromatic yellows. He dreams of her ideas, her questions and her uncertainty breaking the endless stretch of rules and authority at Tommy’s horizon.

In his dreams, Tommy walks. And walks. And walks. 

In his dreams, the oasis is always just out of reach, shining so bright he has to shield his eyes.

In his dreams, the oasis is an illusion, disintegrating under his fingers just as he reaches it.

***

Tommy paces. 

“He’ll be awhile yet,” Elijah says, peering over his laptop at Tommy. “I can call you when he’s free, if you want to go back to your office.”

It’s not so much a question as a request, but Tommy shakes his head, anyway. “I’ll wait.”

“If you have that kinda time to waste,” Elijah shrugs.

“It’s important,” Tommy says, as he looks down at his tablet. It’s thin and transparent, the new Lovett Industries model that runs entirely on solar power. Tommy had looked at it, skeptically, when Tanya had first handed it over, but even in New York City he hasn’t run out of power yet.

“Sure,” Elijah agrees. “It’s all a calculation, yeah? Time is-”

“-money?” Tommy suggests.

“ _Ideas_ ,” Elijah corrects, narrowing his eyes. “I really can call you-”

“I’m good,” Tommy promises, holding up the tablet. He leans against the long table Lovett keeps piled high with chilled La Croix and bowls of nuts and candy and pulls up the Lovett Industries schematics. 

Over the past couple of weeks, Tommy’s been over and over Lovett’s current security protocols. _Inadequate_ is a generous term, and Tommy might have been joking with Jon when he first arrived, but he is, honestly, surprised that Lovett hasn’t been kidnapped five times over during the last decade. If it were Tommy, he’d have had Lovett in Turkey before they’d even realized he was missing.

But, Tommy wasn’t hired to kidnap him. Most of the time, he’s good with that. Sometimes though- 

Well, sometimes Tommy understands why the opulence of Lovett Industries, the specific cadence of Lovett’s genius, and his complete disregard for what the company’s flip-flop did to the war effort has rubbed people, on both sides of the aisle, raw. 

“So you, ahh, fought? In the Middle East?”

Tommy saves the new schematics and looks up to see Elijah watching him. He’s biting his lip, his chin resting in his palm.

Tommy doesn’t try and hide his grimace. “In Iraq, yeah. Three tours.”

“Wow.” Elijah rolls his chair so that he’s not straining to look at Tommy over the edge of his laptop. “Did you, um, ever use our weapons?”

Tommy lets his tablet fall to his side. “You’re actually the first person to ask me.” He frowns. “I’m not totally sure, but, I think so. Lovett Industries supplies - supplied - most of the more high tech weaponry so, yeah, probably.”

“That’s terrifying,” Elijah says, but he leans forward, trying to hide his grin with the edge of his hand. “Cool? Terrifying?”

Tommy laughs. “Both.”

Elijah nods, starting to roll back to his laptop, but Tommy thinks about his lonely hotel room and the night or so a week he drags Jon down to the local Celtics bar, and stops him.

“So, how long have you worked here?”

Elijah pauses - “I was an intern, right out of college” - and grins. “I can build a circuit in ten seconds, flat. And I can remember Lovett’s coffee order.”

Tommy huffs out a laugh. “Equally important?”

Elijah nods, “equally important,” as seriously as possible, then breaks out into a grin. “Seriously, though, Lovett’s letting me design some of the wiring for the new wind turbine and there aren’t many places that let assistants do that.”

“Did I hear my name?” Lovett asks, as he opens his door, his coat already half-way on. “I’m running late, can you call my next appointment and tell them I’m-” He pauses, tilting his head. “You’re my next appointment.”

Tommy pushes off the table and holds up his tablet. “I have some things I wanna run by you.”

Lovett frowns, already pulling his coat off again. “I’m not gonna like this, am I?”

“Probably not.” Tommy shrugs. “But you hired me to take care of your safety, so-”

“Jon hired you,” Lovett corrects. “I just didn’t argue with him.”

“Usually a wise, choice,” Tommy agrees. “But your name is still on my paycheck.”

Lovett waves his hand. “ _What’s mine is_ and all that.”

Tommy’s heart thuds in his ears like the whoosh of an Apache attack helicopter. He pushes back the memories of the last time he saw Jon, dressed in the over-large camouflage they saddled on the civilian contractors, waving at him with a lopsided grin as he boarded the Apache back to Baghdad. Promises of _I’ll write you, once I’ve settled into my new life_ still ring in Tommy’s ears, two years on.

‘Good luck’ Elijah mouths, with a discrete thumbs up behind his laptop screen.

Tommy smiles at Elijah and pushes away the memories as he follows Lovett into his office. He stands, tensely, in front of Lovett’s desk and Lovett throws his jacket over his chair and taps against the glass.

“So, what do you have for me?”

Tommy pulls up his five-point plan, all meticulously sourced and hyperlinked to schematics and statistics, and hands over his tablet.

“This is-” Lovett reads through the plans so quickly it’s dizzying. “Very thorough.”

“Your safety isn’t anything to-”

“Fuck no,” Lovett interrupts, as he gets to the third point. “I am not going to wear a bulletproof vest.”

“You are,” Tommy corrects, firmly.

“And this-” Lovett points to the schematics Tommy’s drawn out for an awning out front of Lovett Industries HQ, where Lovett has a horrifying habit of holding impromptu press conferences. “This is _not_ happening.”

“That’s fine,” Tommy shrugs, agreeably. “If you’re willing to get shot by the mad men who run around New York City with your own modified AK-47s.”

“They don’t actually want to shoot me.” Lovett rolls his eyes without looking up from Tommy’s plans.

“They do, actually.”

“I’m a straight shooter, and that might make me as universally hated as I am adored, but-” Lovett shrugs. “I’m a man of the people.”

Tommy rolls his eyes before he remembers who’s office he’s in, then schools his expression. “I didn’t actually come in here to fight with you about how many people may or may not want to hurt you,” he says, slowly. “These are really very basic security protocols. Frankly, I’m horrified that they weren’t implemented years ago.”

“You came in here-” Lovett’s eyes narrow as he finally looks up. They’re dark and bright in the early afternoon haze floating through the glass walls and Tommy tries to shrug away the feeling that Lovett’s looking straight through him. “- to implement archaic and barbaric security measures.”

“That’s just a _little_ hyperbolic.”

“I’m trying to pivot my company. This is not the time to appear aloof.” Lovett glances towards his phone, which has been buzzing and lighting up since Tommy entered the office, presumably with angry investors and curious journalists and infuriated DOD personnel. “I need to be out there, giving speeches and talking to real people.”

“You can give all the speeches you want,” Tommy promises him. “With the appropriate precautions.”

“I’ll look like one of those CEOs who sits in their corner office, counting his gold coins.”

Tommy tilts his head. “You don’t have the right beak for a monocle.” 

“I’m impressed with your pop culture knowledge,” Lovett grants him. “But I’m not doing all this. I might be a bit much, as men and CEOs go, but I’m not an asshole.”

Tommy pulls back the layers of bluster and thorns of false bravado in the mental image of Lovett that Tommy’s been building. “What you’ll be is alive.”

Lovett taps Tommy’s tablet and glares.

“This isn’t actually your decision,” Tommy says, meeting him glare for glare. “I’m your head of security. I just thought it better to inform you before I implement these changes.”

Lovett opens his mouth, but then his phone beeps a particularly egregious beep, and his shoulders slump. 

He narrows his eyes, suspiciously. “You have a backbone.”

Tommy blinks past the list of arguments he’s spent the past few days mentally storing for this argument. “I- yeah. I was in the military.”

“Where usually it’s all ‘follow the leader, left, right, left, right off the cliff’ but-” Lovett shrugs. “Jon did choose you. I shouldn’t have expected orthodoxy.”

Tommy flounders for a moment, stuck between annoyance at _follow the leader_ and the flash of heat at _Jon chose you_ , and Lovett seizes it.

“I’ll wear the bulletproof vest, but that canopy is not happening. Deal?”

Tommy breathes out his nose. “I really don’t recommend-”

“You might have a backbone, but I promise you I’m much more persistent than you are.”

Tommy huffs out a laugh. “We’ll test that for real, one of these days.”

“I look forward to it.” Lovett holds out his hand. “Deal?”

“When they make bulletproof baseball caps, you’re buying the first one,” Tommy warns, but takes Lovett’s hand to shake on it.

Lovett holds his hand for a just a moment longer than societally appropriate, like he’s trying to read something in Tommy’s palms that he can’t find in the purposely blank expression Tommy’s pasted on his face, then pulls away. “I’m running a bit behind today, so if that’s all-”

Tommy nods, swooping up his tablet, but pauses at the door. “I forgot to add it to the plan,” he lies, “but I’m going with you to all your events now.”

Lovett doesn’t look up from his phone. “Your loss.”

Tommy waits until the door closes behind him before he grins to himself.

“Good meeting?” Elijah asks, surprising him out of his thoughts.

Tommy grins. “Better than expected.”

***

“I got lo mein and sesame chicken.” Tanya drops a greasy paper bag onto the conference room table in front of Tommy. “I’d say ‘I hope that’s okay’ but I asked you five times for preferences and you didn’t answer so,” she shrugs, “I don’t actually care.”

“They sound great,” Tommy says, frowning a little at the oil dripping out of the bottom of the bag and onto the computer interface that graces all tables at Lovett Industries. “You really asked me five times?”

Tanya rolls her eyes. “Really.”

“I was-” Tommy digitally slides a death threat across the table to Tanya’s side of the console. “Focused.”

Tanya hands over a plate as she the threat carefully. “They’re getting quite a bit more graphic.”

“A bit, yeah.”

She frowns, pointing at a name halfway down the page. “Who’s Arch Duke?”

Tommy shrugs. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. I thought you could run it through that new handwriting recognition software?”

Tanya nods, holding her egg roll between her teeth as she spools up the program. 

“Do I smell egg rolls?”

Tommy looks up to see Lovett in the doorway, Jon just over his shoulder.

“They’re not for you,” Tanya warns him.

“This is my building,” Lovett steps forward, reaching his hand out for the carton. “Everything in it is for me.”

“That’s- _a_ way of looking at it,” Jon says, slowly and half-exasperatedly. He takes the half-an-eggroll Lovett holds out for him.

“An illegal and worryingly dictatorial way of looking at it,” Tanya adds.

“Benevolently dictatorial?” Lovett asks, tilting his head thoughtfully.

“It’s not the modifier that’s the problem,” Jon argues as he rests his hand on Lovett’s hip so Jon can lean past him to grab a piece of chicken.

In the weeks since Tommy started working at Lovett Industries, he’s watched Lovett hold everyone at arm’s length. Even his longest, most loyal, and most trustworthy employees are granted access to his widest smiles and his most thoughtful words, but not his touch. Just the week before, Tommy had watched him hand Elijah a donut, carefully and precariously held under a napkin. The week before, he had watched Lovett hold the door open for Tanya, his arm bowed awkwardly so as not to touch her.

Jon though-

Jon is different. Jon’s always been tactile with the people he loves. Tommy's knee still tingles, sometimes, from the feel of Jon's against it, casual and loose in deployment debriefings and intelligence meetings. Tommy had thought, in his weaker moments, that Jon's touch had made him special. 

But if Tommy was special than Lovett is- The sun Jon orients himself around. Tommy's stopped expecting the room to keep breathing when Lovett enters it. He's stopped being surprised by the easy, subconscious way Lovett reorients himself to angle towards wherever Jon is. He's lost track of the number of times Lovett's pressed their shoulders together or Jon's put a welcome hand on Lovett's elbow or knee or shoulders.

Tommy's stopped being surprised, but it hasn't stopped hurting any less.

“Fine, whatever, in the spirit of not being a dictator-” Lovett says around a second egg roll. He hasn't moved away from Jon's hand. “- maybe you two can weigh in on this argument Jon and I have been having for-”

Lovett glances at Jon, who shrugs and offers, “A few days, at least.”

“For a few days,” Lovett continues, without pause.

“You don’t wanna see our text chains,” Jon warns. He’s grinning, his dimples pulled all the way to his sideburns, and Tommy’s chest thumps.

“No, you do not,” Lovett agrees. “Anyway, it’s about the merits of an environmentally friendly laptop.”

“It’ll run on solar power,” Jon explains, his face lighting up. “And all parts will be made out of recycled materials. It’s-”

“Expensive to make,” Lovett rolls his eyes.

“-top of the line,” Jon grants. “But we could cut a deal with the waste removal companies and the shipping and manufacture would be tax free and-”

“Time consuming.”

“Sure.” Jon shrugs. “There’ll be a wait list. What better publicity?”

“He has a point there,” Tanya agrees. “Scarcity sells.”

“I want to sell products because they’re _good_ , not because they’re artificially scarce.” Lovett rolls his eyes as he shifts to look at Tommy. “What do you think?”

Tommy starts a little. It’s the first time Lovett’s asked him a question that hasn’t precipitated an argument about his own health and security. “I think-” Tommy pauses for a moment, weighing the curious look in Lovett’s dark eyes and the bright encouragement in Jon’s. “When I was in the field, sometimes, a working computer is the difference between life and death.”

“Hyperbole much?” Lovett mutters.

Jon elbows him and Lovett straightens his features.

“Soldiers need to _know_ ,” Tommy pushes on, “without the shadow of a doubt, that their computer’s going to work when they need it to. If these computers are even a percent less reliable, that’s a percent more likely that someone could be injured or captured or-” 

Tommy lets it hang in the air between them all. Tanya puts down her chopsticks. Jon catches his breath.

“I’m not selling to the military anymore.” Lovett hands the second half of his egg roll to Jon and crosses his arms over his chest. “So, that’s not really a concern.”

Tommy shakes his head. “Lovett Industries holds, what?, 35 percent market share? They’re bound to make it into the field sometime. And if there’s even a chance of that happening-” Tommy shrugs. “It’s hard for you to understand how high those stakes are, without being there.”

Lovett flinches. From his pocket, his phone beeps, as it has been doing every few moments since he walked in. This time, though, he digs it out, frowning at it performatively. Tommy can read it all, in the exaggerated tilt of Lovett’s chin and the forced wrinkles in his forehead.

Lovett holds his phone up, anyway. “I’ve gotta, ahh, take this-” He walks out, backwards, waving at the food on the table. “Go ahead and finish the rest of my sesame chicken.”

“It’s my sesame chicken,” Tanya calls after him, her voice a little shaky.

“I’ve, ahh-” Jon frowns, his face dark and unreadable for one of only a handful of times Tommy can count through the years of their friendship. “Gotta go and-”

Tommy nods, shaking himself a little, as he turns back to Tanya. Her hands are steepled under her chin, her expression cautious and disappointed. Tommy’s stomach sinks into his knees as he swallows. “I-”

She shakes her head. “The data on Arch Duke has processed.”

Tommy nods, leaning against the table next to her, grateful when she doesn’t pull away. “What’d it find?”

“These three- no, wait, four, are all his handwriting.” Tanya flicks her wrist, sending the digital files to Tommy’s tablet. She shakes her head as she leans closer over the table. “We don’t have anything else with this handwriting in the system, though.”

“Hmm.” Tommy picks up his tablet, opening the four death threats side-by-side. “A pro-war zealot, then.”

Tanya shrugs. “Maybe.”

Tommy waits for her to add something, but when she doesn’t, he stands. “Okay, well, thank you for your help.”

“Anytime,” she promises, and it sounds mostly, but not quite, sincere.

Tommy nods and heads back to his office. He’s gathering his coat, eyes still focused on the death threats, when Jon appears at his door. 

“Hey,” Jon says, quietly. “Walk out with me?”

“Yeah.” Tommy shoves his tablet into his messenger bag and throws it over his shoulder. He waves his hand as he leaves and the lights go out.

“So,” Jon says, after an interminable silence. “What you said back there-?”

Tommy looks up from watching Jon’s feet. He’s never felt this out of sync with him since Jon’s first day in Iraq. “Which part?”

“About-” Jon shakes his head. “About not seeing combat.”

“That wasn’t directed at you,” Tommy says, quickly. 

“Maybe it should have been.” Jon shrugs. “I was on the ground, sure, but I didn’t even carry a gun. I don’t know what you or Lovett have gone through.”

“Lovett?” Tommy asks as Jon steps through the glass doors and holds them for Tommy. Tommy shivers, pulling the collar of his coat closed. “Lovett didn’t see combat. It wasn’t in his file.”

Jon’s eyes are that dark, inscrutable color they were back in the conference room. “There are many different sides to combat.”

“I don’t know-” Tommy shakes his head.

Jon takes a step closer, dropping his voice under the late evening Manhattan winds. “Lovett lives and dies with every bomb that’s dropped over there. He has no illusions about what kind of war we’re fighting and the hand he’s played in it.”

Tommy swallows. “I’ve never thought about it that way.”

“Most probably don’t, but-” Jon shrugs. “Lovett thinks about everything that way.”

“I’ll-” Tommy blinks. “I’ll apologize in the morning.”

Jon nods, his eyes softening to that light, speckled brown Tommy can read so well. “Do you wanna go for a beer?”

Tommy thinks about the six pack sitting in the otherwise empty fridge in his new apartment, and nods.

Jon waves for a taxi.

***

Tommy dreams in sounds. He dreams of the _pat pat pat_ of gunfire. He dreams of the clap of thunder and the sizzle of the desert as it refuses to burn. He dreams of the screams and cries of his fellow soldiers. He dreams of Jon’s words, low and insistant, spoken through his hands and his voice and his pen. He dreams of Nazanin’s gentle insistence that what will be was meant to be, always, forever. _Forgive yourself_ , she whispers, her voice like windchimes as he reaches for her, always reaching for her, as he-

Wakes up. 

His chest is pounding and his ears are ringing.

He pushes back the covers and rolls out of bed. He grabs a beer from the six pack in his fridge and heads out onto the balcony of his new, empty, echoey apartment on the seventh floor of a highrise in Chelsea.

He shivers a little in his boxers and thin t-shirt, but he can’t bear to go back inside where he doesn’t have the sounds of New York to drown out the gunshots still pounding his ears. Instead, he leans against the railing, looking out across the ambulances and the taxis honking and the lovers’ quarrels at the end of the block, towards Lovett Industries, where Lovett might be listening to the same sounds from his own balcony on the top floor, with the same sounds of war ringing in his own ears.

***

“Hey, Tommy.” Dan pushes back from the table to pull Tommy into a one-armed hug. “Discharge suits you.”

Tommy chuckles as he takes the seat across from him. The last time he saw Dan they were both in Mosul, Dan packing up his bunk and hoping against hope that he’d done more good than bad. The last image Tommy has is of Dan, looking tan and leather-worn, blinking into the sun and asking _is it strange that I’ll miss this?_ , quiet and insistent and not waiting for Tommy’s answer before he boarded the transport to Hamburg.

Now that the midday gloom is hazing through the windows of a small cafe on 23rd, Dan looks paler and his grin stretches soft crows feet into the tops of his cheeks. 

“It’s alright,” Tommy shrugs, reaching for the menu and no longer blinking at the $18 cup of pea soup. “You look good. Desk duty keeping you busy?”

“No,” Dan chuckles. “I hate it. Lovett keeping you out of trouble?”

“I’m keeping Lovett out of trouble,” Tommy corrects, not able to hold back his smile as he shakes his head. “He wouldn’t know a threat if it was standing in front of him brandishing a Glock 45 and a pro-war banner.”

“Lovett has a disturbing disregard for his personage,” Dan agrees. “Kind of like some others I know.” He raises an eyebrow.

Tommy shrugs. “One of the reasons he and Jon get along so well, I guess.”

“Not who I was talking about.” Dan holds his gaze until Tommy darts his eyes away, reaching for his iced tea.

“I still don’t know if I should thank or threaten you for this job.”

Dan snorts. “Jon was looking for a head of security.”

“And who introduced Jon to Lovett?” Tommy rolls his eyes.

Dan laughs. “Guilty as charged on that one, too. I’m turning into a regular old yenta” He uncrosses his legs and leans across the table. “Look, when I met Lovett on a tour in Mosul, he was passionate and driven, much too smart for his own good and more than a little lost. Does that sound familiar?”

Tommy takes a deep breath.

“So, when Jon came back, I put them in touch.” Dan shrugs. “And when you were discharged, I may have just happened to mention that you might be stateside and hiding out in the Boston suburbs, watching OC reruns on repeat.”

Tommy frowns. “I didn’t watch _that_ many episodes.”

“Yeah?” Dan shifts his hip so he can pull his phone out of his back pocket. “Because I can pull up the text chains. You were liveblogging Seth and Summer’s epic romance in transcribed detail-”

Dan holds out his phone and Tommy laughs, pushing him away. “If I admit how pathetic I was, will you delete those?”

“Not a chance.” Dan drops his phone, face down, next to his elbow. “Seriously, though.” He reaches out, touching Tommy’s wrist gently. “You look better.”

Tommy shrugs. “Lovett’s a menace and Jon’s followed him down some anti-intervention rabbit hole-”

“Jon led Lovett down an anti-intervention rabbit hole,” Dan corrects.

“-and I didn’t know that anything could be as boring as endless grains of sand, but somehow three months of straight cloud cover has it beat.” Tommy laughs, then frowns. “Wait. _Jon_?”

Dan shrugs, leaning back in his seat as their waitress drops their sandwiches in front of them. “The environmental focus was Lovett’s but the decision to pull out of military contracts? That was Jon’s.”

Tommy blinks.

“More of a suggestion, really, but Lovett never does anything by halves.” Dan shrugs, reaching for his sandwich. “I tried to talk him out of it, but his mind was made up. You know how persuasive they both can be.”

“Yeah.” Tommy pulls off the top of his sandwich and picks at the roast beef. “Like a hammer to a nail.”

Dan laughs. “Apt.”

Tommy snorts.

“Speaking of-” Dan wipes his fingers on his napkin and reaches into his bag. He pulls out a thin manilla folder. “This is all I could find on Arch Duke. There isn’t much, but, from what there is it’s pretty clear he’s not fucking around.”

“Thanks.” Tommy slides it into his lap. “I have a feeling about this one.”

“I trust your instincts. Did over there, do now.” Dan smiles and Tommy’s stomach warms. On the table, Dan’s phone rings and he swears. “Fuck, I’ve gotta-”

Tommy waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, go.”

Dan grins his thanks, and squeezes Tommy’s shoulder as he passes. “You might not like it quite yet, but civilian life likes you.”

Tommy snorts, but his shoulder feels warm and he can’t help but grin. Lovett has the worst habit of not eating until someone reminds him to and a sweet tooth for roast beef. Tommy waves for the bill and a box

***

“Hold the door,” Tommy calls as the wind blows him into Lovett Industries. He doesn’t look up as he jogs to the elevator and takes a deep breath, brushing the drizzle out of his hair. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Jon says, a smirk in his voice. “It’s raining out there?”

Tommy looks up, catching Jon’s eye in the mirrored walls. “It just started. I was like a block away. Thought I could make it in time.”

“This is New York. Keep an umbrella on you at all times,” Jon chastises.

“Ignore him,” Lovett says, without looking up from his phone. His shoulder is pressed against Jon’s. “That’s a personal jab at me.”

“It’s a personal jab at both of you,” Jon corrects. He nods at the box in Tommy’s hand. “Is that the new place on 23rd?”

“Celia’s?” Lovett asks. His eyes light up over his phone. “I love that place.”

“I’ve got half a roast beef.” Tommy holds it out, the box disintegrating a little in his hands. “It’s yours if you don’t mind rain and bits of cardboard with your beef.”

Lovett reaches for it. “I can take or leave the accoutrements, but I’m not in a place to be picky. Thanks, I haven’t eaten all day.”

“I figured.” Tommy shrugs. “I wasn’t really planning on eating it myself anyway.”

Jon’s eyes flit from Tommy to Lovett and back again.

Lovett doesn’t look away from his roast beef sandwich. Tommy doesn’t look away from Lovett.

“Here’s the thing about beef,” Lovett says, still halfway through a bite. “It’s a terrible process. What kind of car do you drive?”

Tommy raises an eyebrow at the segue. “I take the subway.”

Lovett frowns, but Jon offers, pointedly, “Lovett drives a Jeep.”

“Right.” Lovett grabs another slice of roast beef between his fingers. “And growing just a kilo of beef emits the same amount of carbon dioxide that my Jeep emits over more than 200 kilometres of driving.”

Tommy raises an eyebrow. “You’re killing an awful lot of the planet for one man.”

“I didn’t _buy_ the beef. I’m just making sure that the already-horrendous level of rain forest damage doesn’t go to waste.” Lovett points a finger, covered in horseradish, at Tommy’s chest. “What I’m saying, really, is that all your ‘I ride the subway’ sanctimonious elitist bullshit is undermined by your sandwich choices.”

The elevator door chimes and Jon holds it open for Lovett before leaning closer to Tommy and faux whispering, “he’s had three hamburgers this week.”

“Don’t think I couldn’t hear that,” Lovett calls back, as he stops at Elijah’s desk to pick up one of the plastic cows he has lined up behind his laptop. “Cows produce how many more greenhouse gases than other meats?”

“Twice as much as sheep and six times as much as chicken,” Elijah recites. He rolls his eyes in Tommy’s direction, but reaches for the plastic cow. “Give me back my plastic reminder of the horrors of global warming.”

Tommy laughs.

“I can get you one,” Elijah offers.

“I’m good,” Tommy chuckles. 

“He is not, get him one,” Lovett says, as he hands the cow back to Elijah and continues into his office. “And you know what the most ridiculous thing about cows is?”

“That one at Disneyworld with the Mickey Mouse spots?” Tommy offers.

Jon laughs, predictably, the kind of laugh that takes over his whole body. Unpredictably, Lovett follows suit, bending almost in half. It’s more, Tommy’s pretty sure, than his joke deserves, but he’s not about to look a gift-cow in the mouth.

“He’s funny,” Lovett says, finally, when he’s caught his breath. His cheeks are flushed pink and the corners of his eyes are wet.

Jon grins at Tommy, his eyes sparkling. “Yeah, yeah he is.”

“Anyway,” Lovett continues. “Where was I? Oh, right. Explaining what beef and VR have in common.”

Tommy shakes his head and Jon grins. “You were not,” Jon says. “You were explaining to us why Tommy’s a worse human being.”

Tommy glares at him. “You were justifying why owning a Jeep in the middle of New York City isn’t rampant hypocrisy.”

Jon bends in half again.

“That’s the point,” Lovett continues, unabated. “Beef, SUVs, VR, they all follow this strain of human luxuries that become necessities when-”

Tommy crosses his arms over his chest and watches Lovett speak. He talks with his hands and Tommy watches the push and pull of his shirt as he moves his arms in large, emphatic motions. Pundit uncurls herself from the couch and crosses to him, raising her paws onto his thigh and nosing at his gesticulating fingers.

“Yeah, baby, we’ll go for a walk, just let me finish this point-” Lovett finally tells her, as his rant on the similarities between the agricultural and information revolutions winds down.

“No you won’t,” Elijah says from the doorway. “Your speech starts in ten minutes and they need you downstairs 5 minutes ago.”

“Shit.” Lovett pats Pundit’s head absently as his eyes dart around the office. “I forgot-”

Jon holds out Lovett’s tablet, the speech already pulled up. “Ready?” He asks, then shakes his head as he leads Lovett out of the office. “Not that it matters, the speech is gonna go on without you.”

“Not exactly _without_ me,” Lovett huffs.

Tommy’s chest burns at the easy way they fall into this clearly practiced routine. Jon had always seemed incongruous with the harsh light and stiff living of Iraq. He fits, here. With a tablet under his arm and his stride steady as he falls into step next to Lovett’s erratic movements. Steadying, centering, a light at the end of Lovett’s tunnel.

Tommy shivers, a little, as their warmth draws further away.

“Keep up,” Lovett says, exasperated, as he looks behind to make sure that Tommy’s following.

Tommy stumbles a little as he lengthens his steps to catch up with them at the elevator. “You really need to tell me about these public speeches,” he whines as he reaches them, grabbing, desperately, for the easy beats of their conversation before Elijah interrupted, “ _before_ you schedule them.”

“For the amount I pay you,” Lovett says, grinning as he scrolls through the speech on his tablet, skimming it one last time, “I’ve gotta keep you on your toes.”

Tommy opens his mouth to complain, but Jon holds out his phone silently, the same speech already pulled up.

Tommy gets halfway through the third paragraph before, “someone’s definitely going to want to kill you for this.”

Lovett looks up. “That’s why I have you, right?”

“If I’d had time to prepare-” Tommy argues, as the elevator doors chime open and he follows after Lovett, their shoulders brushing, just briefly. He sighs. “Yeah, yeah you do.”

Lovett throws a grin over his shoulder as he pushes the doors open.

Tommy’s still catching it as he follows, taking his place next to Jon off to the side of the podium. Tommy’s kept up his side of his bargain to keep Lovett safe, and he hasn’t built an awning over the front of Lovett Industries. As he squints at Lovett, though, it’s clear he’s not hiding a bulletproof vest under his thin t-shirt and his unzipped puffy coat.

“You never warned me this job would be so exasperating,” Tommy whispers, loudly, out of the side of his mouth.

“Shh,” Jon shushes him, his eyes transfixed on Lovett, his mouth moving along with Lovett’s words.

Tommy sweeps the crowd with his eyes, noting a couple stiff shoulders and awkward-looking baseball caps, before tuning back into the speech. He listens with one eye on the crowd and one on Lovett, trying to pick out Jon’s soaring rhetoric, inspirational and bewitching, from the lines Lovett ad libs, charismatic and textured. Lovett speaks with his hands, as he always does, and with his eyes, deep and captivating, as he catches Tommy’s eye on his most egregious climate change claims.

Lovett’s eyes shift from his to sweep over the crowd and Tommy starts. He swears under his breath and looks back over the sea of people. He finds the woman with the hunched back and the younger man with perfect posture, he finds the woman in the overly-large windbreaker and-

He can’t find the man in the red hat.

He heart thuds against his ribcage. He sweats, at the back of his neck and down his spine. He reaches for his holster.

There he is.

Tommy lets his hand drop from his gun.

The man raises his hand to cheer and something shines at his hip, catching light in the post-rain sun. Tommy pushes past Jon and slides into the crowd, circling the man in the red hat and starting to reach for-

His belt buckle.

“Hey, man, what’s your deal?” The guys asks, jerking around to slap at Tommy’s hand.

Tommy raises his palms. “Sorry, wrong guy.”

The man frowns, but his wife’s tugging at his elbow, “Al, isn’t this just wonderful?,” and Tommy slips a few rows back while Al is occupied.

Tommy’s heart pounds as he steps back onto the sidelines. 

***

Tommy dreams of missed chances.

He dreams of a flash of light. He dreams of a wall of sand. He dreams of the pain in his back and the searing burn on his forearm as he’s thrown back into an unforgiving bed of sand. He dreams of screams and the echo-ey way he hears them, through the ringing in his ears. He dreams of the ache in his knees as he crawls forward. He dreams of shrapnel and blood. He dreams of a chest stilling in his hands.

As Tommy dreams, the face slides from Nazanin’s to Jon’s to Lovett’s.

Tommy wakes, screaming.

***

“It’s nice,” Jon says, his eyes darting around Tommy’s still-mostly-empty apartment.

Tommy meets him in the living room and holds out an opened can of beer in a Red Sox koozie. “You hate it.”

“No, no,” Jon says, too fast, then shrugs. “It’s a little sparse.”

Tommy sits on the couch next to him, sliding his leg under his hips. “It could use a little something.”

“A lot of somethings,” Jon agrees, taking a long swig of his beer.

“It’s hard, you know?” Tommy says, glancing down at the edge of his bottle, picking at the wet label. “I was so used to sharing a room with three other guys. Just my laptop and a picture of-” He swallows and can’t meet Jon’s eyes.

Jon clears his throat. “It was easier, for me. I was only there for nine months and I, ahh, never stopped missing home.”

“I remember,” Tommy chuckles. “You never stopped whining about it.”

Jon grunts, affronted. “You never complained.”

“No,” Tommy says, slowly, picking at the hem of his newly-purchased sweatpants for use during his newly-found leisure time. “I never did.”

“I do miss it sometimes, though,” Jon says, quietly. “The lights on the Chrysler Building have nothing on the constellations we could see on cloudless nights.”

Tommy chuckles. “You still don’t know which is the Big Dipper.”

“Neither do you.” Jon spreads his arm along the back of the couch. “I liked the idea of it, though, knowing that I could count the stars, whenever I needed them.”

“I spent a lot of time counting them after you left,” Tommy whispers.

“The same sky,” Jon says, just as softly. “Or, would have been, if I could have seen them.”

Tommy takes another long sip of his beer. “There are a lot of things I miss. I miss the camaraderie. The energy of a war zone. The relationships I made with the Iraqi people.” Tommy swallows Nazanin’s name on his tongue, just like he did Jon’s earlier. “The hustle and bustle of everyday life.”

“I do not miss the food, though,” Jon adds. His fingers flex on the back of the cushion, brushing Tommy’s shoulder.

“I miss the fruit,” Tommy argues.

Jon sighs, his eyes loose and warm. “The plums.”

“And those little grapes.”

“So sweet,” Jon agrees, dropping his head back against the cushions. His beer is held loosely in his lap.

“I miss driving those tanks. That was fun.”

“Terrifying,” Jon corrects, scrunching his nose and his eyes.

“And I miss,” Tommy finishes, slowly, his voice sliding even lower, “knowing, every day, that I’m doing the most important thing I’ll ever do.”

Jon lifts his head. “I think,” he says, just as slowly, “that I’m doing the most important thing I’ll ever do, right now.”

Tommy swallows, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. Jon’s fingers still on the back of the couch.

“We’re doing really good work, Tommy. It’s important, and it’s making a difference. And we- _I_ am really proud of the strides we’ve been making.”

Lovett’s name hangs between them. Tommy pulls the rest of the wrapper off his bottle.

“I know it might not be the same, for you,” Jon continues, earnestly. “You were actually doing good work over there.”

“Translating is good work,” Tommy corrects, automatically.

“But,” Jon sails past it. “I hope you can see the good here, too.”

Tommy thinks about the speeches Lovett’s been making, about the way Jon’s face lights up to hear him, about the public that lines up for just the chance to ask Lovett a question about global warming. He rolls the glue on his bottle with the pad of his thumb. “Yeah.”

Jon slides his arm back into his lap and lifts his beer. He takes a long, slow swallow.

Tommy clears his throat. “Are we gonna reminisce all day, or are we gonna watch a ball game?”

Jon’s face smoothes into a grin.

***

“Hey.”

Tommy glances up from the Twitter feed on his tablet. Lovett’s leaning in his doorway, dressed in an over-large sweatshirt and joggers, a series of wrinkles in his forehead.

“You’re here late.” Lovett nods at the pages strewn over Tommy’s desk.

“Yeah.” Tommy leans over the file Dan lent him on Arch Duke, trying to cover it as surreptitiously as possible. “I’ve got a few things to finish up.”

Lovett nods, sliding his hands into his pockets.

“Did you need anything?” Tommy asks.

“Nah,” Lovett shrugs. “Just- stuck. Thought a walk might clear my head.”

“Has it?”

Lovett chuckles. “No.” He tilts his head. “Although, maybe, yeah this could be good. Follow me.”

Tommy glances down at his file. “Um.”

“Only if you have a moment. Do you have a moment? You’re here at 10pm, you clearly don’t have any place better to be.”

“Yeah.” Tommy laughs, standing up and shoving the papers into a stack and pushing the entire file into the top drawer of his desk. The drawer locks automatically. “All I’m delaying is a date with the baseball game and a beer.”

Lovett wrinkles his nose. “How heterosexual of you.”

“Not so heterosexual,” Tommy shrugs, “if I’m the one doing it.”

Lovett stabs the toe of his pink sneakers into a desk that has been outside his office for as long as Tommy’s worked here. He swears a little and glares sideways at Tommy. “Could have fooled me, with all the stories Jon’s been telling me about your nights out on the town. He was civilized until you arrived, and now all I hear is ‘tackle’ that and ‘Pabst’ this.”

“We’re not drinking PBR,” Tommy rolls eyes. “Although pretty soon it’s going to be all I can afford in this ridiculous city.”

“I know how much I pay you,” Lovett reminds him, as he crosses to a cork board that covers half of the inner wall of his office. “’Bout time you do something to earn your keep.”

“You haven’t been assassinated, have you?” Tommy shrugs. “Seems like keep enough.”

Lovett hums, but he’s already focused on the board. It’s filled with newspaper articles, pinned in and around technical drawings and mathematical vectors and scribbles in Lovett’s chicken scratch.

Tommy peers closer. “Is this a stealth aircraft?”

Lovett’s eyes widen. “Yeah. You, ahh, got that from my diagrams?”

Tommy relished the rare ability to push Lovett back onto his heels. “Yeah,” Tommy shrugs. “It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? This,” he points to one of the older drawings, “shows the wings, but-” He frowns.

“Not so obvious for the rest of my staff,” Lovett mutters. “But?”

“But,” Tommy says, slowly, following a string from the drawing to another group of technical specs at the bottom of the board. “It doesn’t work, does it?”

Lovett frowns. “No. It’s-”

“Too heavy,” Tommy supplies. “By, what? Thirty pounds?”

“Sixty,” Lovett supplies. He’s still looking at Tommy with flushed cheeks and a narrow, bright lilt to his eyes.

Tommy shrugs. “I helped out, a little, in the airfields. Passed the time.” Tommy peers closer. “This would revolutionize stealth aircraft.”

Lovett’s eyes narrow. “To deliver food and paper goods, for _humanitarian aid_. In a way that doesn’t add kilos of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”

“Sure,” Tommy agrees. “But the implications for the military-”

“Are none of my concern.” Lovett crosses his arms over his chest, leaning against the back of the nearest couch. Pundit lifts her head, rising onto the cushions and nosing at his elbow. “Anymore.”

“This could change the course of the war,” Tommy urges. “This could _save lives_.”

Lovett snorts. “This is so like-” Lovett uncrosses his arms to ruffle Pundit’s ears, but he frowns deep enough to make up for it. “You military types. You think the best way to fight violence is with bigger bombs and faster guns.”

“ _You_ thought better weaponry was the only way to win the war,” Tommy meets Lovett, frown for frown, “until a few months ago.”

“Granted,” Lovett shrugs. “But I’m a big enough man to admit when I was wrong. Are you?”

“Sure,” Tommy agrees. “When I am wrong. I can admit, for instance, that, maybe, just maybe, if we could do it all over again, intervention might not have been the way to go. But we’re there now. We can’t just abandon the Iraqi people.”

“We can’t force them to choose democracy, either,” Lovett argues. “At some point, we need to leave their governing to them. And focus on the health of the planet and the other seven billion people living on it.”

“What makes the 38 million Iraqi people less valuable than people living in New York or Dubai or Beijing or London?”

“Nothing.”

“We need to show them the way, then. The number of people I met in Mosul-” Lovett flinches, but Tommy pushes forward “who were the sweetest, most thoughtful and helpful people I’ve ever met-”

Lovett swallows. Pundit whines and he pulls her into his arms so she can rest her chin on his shoulder. “You really believe that?” Lovett asks, and he sounds genuinely thoughtful. “That we’re doing more good than bad over there?”

“I really do.”

“You,” Lovett chuckles a little desperately, “are not what I was expecting when Jon said he’d hired a vet.”

“You aren’t what I expected, either,” Tommy tells him, seriously. “You should probably fire your PR person. Your public image is-”

“Volatile?” Lovett offers.

“Caustic,” Tommy corrects. He looks back at the cork board and points at the diagram of the plane’s undercarriage. “If you change the angle, here, it’ll cut your weight by at least 60 sixty pounds.”

Lovett’s eyes flash, bright and wide and excited. “You’re- fuck, you’re right. I’ve been staring at these for so long-“

Tommy shrugs. “Occam’s razor.”

Lovett laughs and dumps Pundit into Tommy’s arms as he goes searching for a pencil.

***

Tommy dreams of the sun setting over the horizon. He dreams of the sand under his feet and the unending stretch of land, as far as his eyes can see. He dreams of missing the ocean, of missing Dunkin’ Munchkins and IPAs. 

He dreams of Jon’s body, highlighted in reds and yellows and oranges. He dreams of Jon’s shoulders, so warm and sturdy under Tommy’s hands. He dreams of Jon’s voice, low and filled with hope and laughter, as he said, “we’ll meet again” and “this isn’t goodbye, Tom, just ‘til later.” He dreams of Jon, stopping halfway up the gangplank. He dreams of Jon turning around, smile so wide and bright that Tommy pocketed it, kept it with him in the monochrome months that followed.

He dreams of Nazanin’s laugh, of the petals and the chimes of it, of how it chased the hurt of missing Jon deep, deep into the recesses of Tommy’s memory. He dreams of a new life, one made manifest in the low roofs and bright sun of Mosul. He dreams of a life he thought he’d never leave.

He dreams of Lovett’s voice, the way Tommy can read everything he needs to in Lovett’s tone and language. He dreams of the sun rising over New York, glinting off the metal buildings and the hole where the World Trade Centers should be. He dreams of a new life, filled with roast beef sandwiches and intellectual curiosity and a world removed from the life-and-death of Iraq but still just as important.

Tommy wakes with a smile on his face. He rolls over, clutching his pillow to his chest and closing his eyes, again.

***

“I can't believe I let you drag me to a _baseball game_ ,” Lovett complains as he dumps his foam finger onto the chair next to him. “Joe, a round of tequila shots.”

“I have work to do tonight,” Jon groans.

“And a few beers, to wash it down,” Lovett adds. He slides his foot under himself and leans across the counter, dropping his voice, “for those among us who can't hold their alcohol.”

“You're a fucking monster,” Jon groans as he tugs at the hem of Lovett's shirt until he settles back onto his stool.

“You took me to a _baseball game_ ,” Lovett repeats. “I've never been so bored.”

Tommy shrugs. “You seemed to enjoy it well enough. Even caught you singing along to _Take Me Out to the Ballgame_.”

“That's an American classic,” Lovett waves him off. “Doesn't count.”

“Besides, we didn't drag you.” Jon takes the beers from Joe and hands them out, motioning surreptitiously for a round of water as well. Joe winks at him. “You threw out the first pitch, so, technically you dragged us.”

“Tommy had to make sure someone didn't shoot me. You came voluntarily.”

Jon shrugs, leaning closer than he needs to to clink their shot glasses together. “If it was the last few minutes of your life, I figured I should be there.”

Tommy groans. He'd spent days worrying and planning for Tanya's PR stunt and he regrets showing Jon the last three very specific and very aggressive threats Arch Duke's sent over the past week. “Can we not joke about this?”

Lovett reaches across Jon to tip his glass to Tommy. “To my continued life.”

Jon shakes his head, but tips his shot back and grimaces, reaching for the lime wedge Lovett's already holding out. “Fuck.” He shivers. “I've really gotta get back to the office.”

Lovett frowns. “I'm your boss and I say the paperwork can wait.”

“The Board is my boss,” Jon corrects. He scoots his chair back and squeezes Lovett's shoulder, before tipping his head to Tommy. “You'll make sure he gets home okay?”

“Hey,” Lovett frowns.

Tommy chuckles, scooting over to take Jon's abandoned chair. He smiles indulgently. “Yeah, we'll be fine. More tequila?”

Lovett raises an eyebrow and glances back at Jon. “I take it back, you can go. Tommy's more fun, anyway.”

“I'm gonna regret this.” Jon shakes his head and squeezes both their shoulders again. “Remember, 9am, direct reports meeting.”

Lovett's already deep in conversation with the bartender and Tommy grins, flushing a little as he waves Jon away, ignoring the careful, hopeful look on Jon's face before he turns to leave.

“So,” Lovett sits back on his heels, raising their new shots. “What should we cheers to?”

Tommy thinks for a moment. “The Yankees losing?”

“Predictable,” Lovett complains. 

He's leaning against his elbow on the bar, his bicep bulging under the brand new Mets shirt Lovett had made Elijah pick up for him earlier in the day. His face is flushed from the tequila and the sun at the game earlier. His cheeks are pulled into a grin and his curls are wild on his forehead.

Tommy's stomach twists, a white hot pulse of arousal that he hasn't felt in the months since he returned stateside. He'd thought, a couple times, of trying online dating while he was in Boston, but it had felt embarrassingly pedestrian, as everything had, measured against the thrill of danger undergirding his every move in Iraq. Lovett, though- Nothing about Lovett is safe or pedestrian.

Tommy swallows, dropping his voice into his lowest register. “Not so predictable.”

He slides his hand, slowly, onto Lovett's knee, giving Lovett every opportunity to stop him.

“Fuck.” Lovett stares at him. His knee twitches under Tommy’s fingers but he doesn’t pull away.

Tommy tips back his shot, swallowing and lowering his head, slowly, as he licks at the salt on his hand.

Lovett's still staring.

“My apartment’s just a few block away,” Tommy says, keeping his voice even.

“I know.” Lovett wets his lips. “I had Elijah find it for you.”

“Yeah.” Tommy squeezes the pressure points above Lovett’s knee. “But you haven’t seen what I’ve done with the place.”

“A boxy couch and one of those faux-wood coffee tables?” Lovett guesses. “Maybe one of those wooden map things that take up half a wall.”

“Maybe,” Tommy shrugs, regretting, already, his half-hazard trip to Ikea a few weeks before. “Also a mattress. One of those soft, expensive ones you have to order online.”

Lovett’s eyes flick from Tommy to the bartender. They’re dark enough for Tommy to lose himself in them, and he sees the exact moment Lovett makes up his mind.

“Sold,” Lovett says, his voice rising an octave when Tommy slides his hand further up Lovett’s thigh. “Let me just-” He motions for their check, signs his name with a flourish then pockets the black, metallic card.

“Don’t forget your foam finger,” Tommy offers, as he pushes back his stool. He leans over Lovett to grab it, careful to brush his chest across Lovett’s shoulders.

Lovett shivers gratifyingly, but he waits until Tommy’s letting them into his apartment before whispering, “you’ve been such a surprise, Tommy Vietor.”

Tommy lets the door slam closed behind them, then presses Lovett against it. He brackets Lovett’s head with his arms as he leans down to kiss him. Lovett’s entire body trembles, his hands gripping Tommy’s elbows as he rises to meet him. Tommy parts his lips, pulling Lovett in, overwhelmed with the taste of tequila and lime and cinnamon from the churro he’d eaten at the game.

“Fuck.” Tommy gasps as he struggles for breath. “I didn’t expect, I didn’t plan-”

Lovett laughs, his breath ghosting against Tommy’s mouth. “No shit.” He pushes closer, the hard line of his dick pressing into Tommy’s upper thigh.

Tommy groans, pulling Lovett back in, his hands sliding under the blue Mets t-shirt to brush against the soft skin of his stomach. He can feel every push and pull of Lovett’s breath, the way he shivers as he sways closer, his back bowing away from the door.

Tommy mirrors Lovett’s motions with his tongue, focusing on the feel and taste of him as his fingers play at the button of his maroon pants. He slides it out of the buttonhole, opening just enough space for his index finger to dip under, sweeping against the head of Lovett’s dick.

Lovett leaps towards him, and he keens against Tommy’s mouth. “Tommy, shit, slow down or this is gonna be over awfully quick.”

Tommy chuckles and it takes almost everything in him to step back. Lovett looks as mussed as Tommy feels, his curls flattened against his head from Tommy’s hand and his shirt rucked up his chest, his stomach flushed above the opening in his pants.

“You want a beer?” Tommy asks, before he loses all self-control and pulls Lovett back in for the most ridiculous, embarrassing, quickest- Tommy swallows around the thought. “I’d offer you something harder, but, my cupboards are kinda bare.”

Lovett shrugs, “a beer’s fine,” as he follows Tommy into the living room. He stands in front of Tommy’s entertainment center, which is nothing more than a few faux-wood bookshelves and a coffee table shoved precariously in between them as a makeshift TV stand. “Just as I suspected,” Lovett chuckles.

Tommy shrugs. “I’m used to living with a lot less.”

“Touché.” Lovett’s shoulders drop a little as he slides his finger along Tommy’s shelves, stopping to pull out a book. “You bought my book?”

Tommy drops his head to hide his blush as he digs into a drawer for the bottle opener. “I read your book,” he corrects. “When Jon told me about the job.”

“I’m surprised you still took the job,” Lovett laughs. “I’ve been working on a second edition for, well, years.”

“You do come off a little pompous,” Tommy admits, as he gets both beers open and takes them into the living room.

“I am a little pompous,” Lovett corrects, as he trails his finger further along the bookshelf. He picks up a framed photo. “Who’s this?”

Tommy’s mouth goes dry and he takes a long swig of his beer as he hands Lovett’s over. He shakes a little as their fingers brush. “No one.”

“You have one photo in this entire place.” Lovett raises an eyebrow, putting the bottle on the shelf so he can subconsciously pull the hem of his t-shirt down to cover the pale, soft skin of his stomach. “She’s someone. If you- Is she the one you left behind?”

“She’s-” Tommy swallows. “Her name was Nazanin. She was an Iraqi translator. In Mosul. I met her after- After Jon left, I needed a translator and she, ahh, she volunteered.”

Lovett traces his finger over Nazanin’s face. Tommy doesn’t need to look at the photo to know how bright her smile is, her eyes shining as she looks up at Tommy, trusting him, wanting to help him, wanting- wanting everything, up until the end.

“You love her,” Lovett says, quietly. It isn’t a question.

“I-” Tommy fights with the tense as it tears through the lump in his throat. “I loved her, yeah.”

“What happened?”

“She died.” Tommy closes his eyes. He can feel it, in his bones, the lilt of her lips, the fear in her eyes, as she reached for him. The blood on her fingers, the blood on her chest, the way her eyes closed before her lips stopped moving. “The military said it was a Level Five target. Worth the risk.”

“I’m sorry.” Lovett’s hands clench around the picture frame. “I’m so sorry, Tommy.”

“I’ve never talked about this before,” Tommy admits, letting the side of his mouth lift ruefully. “It’s- they said they did everything they could. Used the most sophisticated weaponry, but it still wasn’t enough.”

Lovett’s entire body goes still. “What- do you- what did they use?”

Tommy shrugs. “It was- I don’t remember. A C- something. A C-forty something?”

Lovett throat moves slowly. “C-46?”

“Yeah.” Tommy frowns. “What does it-?” He stops, his eyes itching as he catches Lovett’s.

Lovett doesn’t look away. Under his fingers, the glass on the picture frame spiders and cracks. “That was- fuck. That was one of mine. Tommy-”

Lovett’s thumb is bleeding. 

Lovett’s voice is distant, echoey in Tommy’s ears. 

Lovett’s hand is cold, as he reaches out, leaving blood against Tommy’s pale, goose-pumped skin.

“Tommy, I’m so sorry, I never meant- Fuck, I never-”

Tommy steps back. He holds out his hand and Lovett places the remnants of the picture frame in his palm. Glass falls to the carpet between them.

“Shit.” Lovett sucks in his stomach as he reaches down to do up the button on his pants. His blood sinks into the maroon fabric, disappearing, like- like none of it matters. “I’m gonna- I should go. I should-”

Tommy nods.

His blood is rushing in his ears. His entire body is shaking. The apartment feels so small, so close, so tight.

The front door opens and closes.

Tommy looks down at the picture of Nazanin and him, sullied, now, with Lovett’s blood and the scratches of glass.

He sinks to the floor, the frame cradled in his lap.

***

Tommy doesn’t dream that night.

Or the next.

Or the next.

***

Jon lets himself in with a key Tommy never gave him.

“Tom?” He calls into the apartment.

Jon’s standing in the doorway to his bedroom before Tommy has time to decide how to respond. Tommy blinks at him, his eyes caked and scratchy. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He doesn’t know if he’s slept. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to react to the narrowing of Jon’s eyes and the worried tilt of his shoulders.

“You missed direct reports,” Jon says, leaning against the door frame and crossing his arms. “Twice.”

Tommy sits up. He feels weak, like he’s been through six weeks of bootcamp without a day off to recover. His quilts pool around his lap. “What day is it?”

Jon reaches for the phone on Tommy’s bedside table. It’s dark, the battery dead. Tommy remembers, vaguely, the red blinking light of warning. It had been sometime in-between sleeping and waking, when Tommy had been absolutely certain that he was back in Iraq, that maybe – just maybe – he could save her this time.

“Tuesday,” Jon shrugs. A few days, then. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

Tommy looks away.

“Because when I left, you were drinking tequila shots. And now Lovett’s fired half the staff and you haven’t been to work in almost a week.”

“Nothing happened,” Tommy says, quietly, because nothing has happened. He knew who Lovett was before he took this job. He knew- If he had thought about it, he would have suspected-

Tommy misses Iraq.

He misses the surety, the black-and-white way he used to look at the world.

He misses the way Jon used to look at him, when everything made sense. He misses Nazanin’s touch, the way her fingers brushed his, the way her voice rose on the end of statements, like everything was a question. Like the world was so much more complicated than Tommy ever allowed it to be.

“Sure,” Jon agrees, slowly. He drops a file onto Tommy’s head. “These are Arch Duke’s latest threats. They’re quite a read.”

Tommy nods. His head feels thick and heavy.

Jon sighs, reaching over to plug in Tommy’s phone. Tommy watches the muscles of his back ripple, absently. “I’ve gotta get back to the office, but, answer this, okay?”

Tommy flinches. He hates disappointing Jon, but crawling to the rim of the ditch he’s dug himself is exhausting, just thinking about it.

“Okay,” Jon nods. “Good talk.”

Tommy’s already sinking back into his pillows before he hears the front door slam closed.

***

Tommy’s front door clicks open. Again. Tommy’s still not sure how many days have passed.

“It’s bad cop,” Dan’s voice echoes through Tommy’s empty apartment. “Jon gave me your key. He’s worried that you haven’t-” Dan pauses in Tommy’s bedroom, crossing his arms over his chest. “Jon’s worried that you haven’t left your apartment. With, it appears,” he raises an eyebrow, “good reason.”

“I’m fine,” Tommy shrugs, glancing over at the pile of frozen pizza boxes and take-out Chinese containers.

“You are decidedly not fine,” Dan corrects. He disappears for a moment, then reappears with a large, black garbage bag. One of the environmentally friendly, made from recycled cans garbage bags that Lovett endorses and forces on his staff.

“’m just tired,” Tommy mumbles as he slides back into his blankets. “I need some sleep.”

“You need,” Dan corrects, as he pulls open the thick blackout curtains, “a taste of the world. Come one. Lunch, on me.”

“I’m not hungry,” Tommy tries.

“Funny,” Dan tilts his head. “It’s almost like you thought that was a request.”

“You’re not my commanding officer anymore.” Tommy’s head pulses with thick, angry lights behind his eyes.

Dan snorts. “Once your commanding officer, always your commanding officer.” He taps Tommy’s hip. “Up. Shower. Now.”

Tommy frowns, but he pushes back the covers, slowly throwing his legs over the side of the bed. He groans as he pushes his muscles to move in ways they haven’t for days.

Dan disappears into the bathroom, and Tommy hears the sound of water before he sees the smoke streaming into his bedroom.

“Hot, just the way you like it,” Dan says, in a tone of voice that would sound gentle to anyone who hasn’t been through bootcamp with him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tommy waves him away, reaching for his phone. It’s still connected to the wall, as Jon had left it. He has over a hundred missed calls and texts. None of them are from Lovett.

“Get. Now.”

Tommy groans, drops his phone back to his bedside table, and pulls himself into the shower.

***

The outside world is bright and loud. It’s too sharp, too clear, against the haze he'd created for himself the last few days, alone in his apartment, with nothing but his regrets for light and company.

Regret for Jon - Jon, walking up that gangplank, flying away, from Iraq, from Tommy, without ever knowing how Tommy felt. Regret for Nazanin, regret that he’d told her, that he'd brushed her hair off her neck and whispered in her ear, but it hadn’t mattered, anyway. Regret for Lovett, for seeing the tequila on Lovett’s lips and the brilliance in his fingers and for thinking _maybe_ , just- maybe.

Tommy should know better by now. Things aren't different this time. Things are never different, for Tommy.

“And you, sir?” the waiter taps his pen against his tablet and stares, impatiently, at Tommy's blank face.

Right. Lunch. Tommy's eyes glide down his menu, his stomach curdling at each of the listings. “Um,” he bites his lip. “A salad of some kind? Caesar, maybe. Yeah, Caesar.”

The waiter looks bored, by Tommy's order and by his own lot. “With chicken?”

“Yes,” Dan answers for him, sensing Tommy's indecision. “And the club sandwich.”

Tommy's stomach flips again and he shakes his head. “I don’t-”

“We’ll share,” Dan says, definitively. “And two pints. Please.”

“I really don’t-” Tommy starts, but their waiter snaps up their menus with precision and turns on his heel before Tommy can finish. Tommy turns to Dan. “I'm not all that hungry.”

“Convenient, since I didn’t actually bring you here to feed you,” Dan interrupts, then narrows his eyes at the bags under Tommy's and the pale, unhealthy tint to Tommy's cheeks. “Although it is a necessary side effect.”

“I thought-” Tommy crosses his legs and tears at the edges of his napkin, his heart sinking stupidly. “I kinda thought Jon had sent you.”

Dan eyes don’t narrow any less. “Jon’s worried, Lovett’s worried. But, they’re not here and I don’t really care if you’re determined to wallow in self-pity or not.”

Tommy smiles, despite himself.

“You’re here because I have some information for you.” Dan reaches into his bag. “On Arch Duke.”

And the smile fades. “I don’t-” He shakes his head. “Arch Duke isn’t- Lovett doesn’t want-”

Dan’s expression hardens. “Lovett’s safety isn’t really any of his concern.”

Tommy sighs. “It’s not mine, either. Anymore.”

“Isn’t it?” Dan raises an eyebrow.

“It’s-” Tommy swallows, remembering the look on Lovett’s face when Tommy had told him about Nazanin. Remembering the horrified flush on Lovett’s cheeks and the blood on his hands. Remembering the way Lovett’s voice had broken and the way he had stepped back from Tommy, subconsciously. Remembering the way Lovett had looked at him, like Tommy was the manifestation of all his worst nightmares. “Lovett doesn’t want that. Lovett doesn’t want me-” In Tommy’s head, he ends the sentence there, but he forces himself to finish it for Dan, “-on the team anymore.”

“Arch Duke is dangerous,” Dan says, refusing to grant that a response as he pulls a folder out of his bag. “He’s ex-special forces.”

Despite himself, Tommy leans forward to reach for the folder.

“He served in the Gulf,” Dan continues as he hands it over. “He has the means and the skills.”

Tommy shuffles through the pages, with less blacked-out sections and more noteworthy comments than the first file Dan had given him.

“His name was Jack Trent, then. He disappeared at the end of the war, and the Pentagon’s always suspected that the Lexington Group helped him escape with a new identity,” Dan continues, carefully. “When Lovett pulled Lovett Industries out of the war game, he cost the Lexington Group at least $30 billion.”

Tommy’s stomach twists, tight and hot.

“And,” Dan continues, slowly. “He’s done this before.”

Tommy looks up from the file, feeling the inevitable pull of all the facts coming together. “When?” 

“2005. Turkey.” Dan pulls out a second folder. “It was anonymous, but the FBI’s confidence level is 75%.”

Tommy takes the second folder, trying to gage Dan’s worry level in the carefully-controlled ridges of his face, when the TV over Dan’s head catches his eye. The red flash of a _Breaking News_ banner and the incongruity of _All My Children_ cutting to a scene downtown. The sounds of gunshots. The stampede of people. Lovett’s name in block lettering across the bottom of the screen, too fast for Tommy to read.

The restaurant hazes around Tommy’s senses as he’s thrown back to Iraq. The floor under him sinks away into the warmth and grit of sand. The voices and clanking of cutlery snap to the _pat pat pat_ of gunfire. The image of Dan in front of him fuzzing in and out, first to Nazanin’s face, so pale and her eyes haunted with pain, then fuzzing again, until it’s Lovett’s chest in his hands, Lovett’s eyes pleading with Tommy to _help him_.

Tommy pushes his chair back and it thumps to the floor.

“Tommy, what-?” Dan trails off, glancing behind him. His face ghosts. “Fuck.”

Tommy thinks he says something like “I’ve gotta get there” but it might just come out as a scream. Dan, at least, drops a handful of bills onto the tabletop and grabs Tommy’s elbow, pulling him out of the restaurant and flashing his military badge to commandeer the first taxi at the curb.

“NewYork-Presbyterian,” Dan orders.

“No.” Tommy pulls out his phone. “No. The scene. We have to get-”

“It’s too late,” Dan tells him and Tommy flinches. Dan lowers his voice and squeezes Tommy’s knee. “He’s already on route to the hospital. We can meet him there. He’d want you there.”

Tommy gapes, arguments seeping through his mind, until Dan hands Tommy his phone, the video pulled up. Tommy grabs for it, already pressing play.

He watches as Lovett stands on the podium outside Lovett Industries.

He watches as Lovett grins into the early-afternoon sunlight as it glints off the building, working the crowd with his wit and his soaring rhetoric and his conviction.

He watches as Jon grins ruefully from his place to Lovett’s left.

He watches as the crowd collectively gasps.

He watches as Jon’s eyes widen.

He watches as Jon cries out.

He watches Jon step forward, catching Lovett as he falls.

He watches Jon cradle Lovett’s body to him on the floor of the podium.

Tommy rewinds.

He watches the crowd as it parts.

He watches the man in the dark hat.

He watches the sun glint off the gun.

Tommy rewinds.

He watches Lovett stop mid-speech.

He watches Lovett’s eyes widen as he sees the man in the crowd.

He watches Lovett throw himself to his left.

He watches as red blooms across Lovett’s chest.

Tommy rewinds.

Tommy watches.

Tommy watches and rewinds and watches and rewinds and can’t do anything to stop it.

***

The taxi barely rolls to a stop before Tommy’s out the door and rushing into the Emergency Room at NewYork Presbyterian. He uses the intake desk to stop his momentum as he asks, “Jon Lovett?” his voice hoarse and cracking down the middle.

“Hmm?” The nurse glances up. “You are-”

Tommy reaches into his pockets, pulling out a wilting Subway map and a gum wrapper. “I’m head of security at Lovett Industries. He was brought in-” Tommy swallows and pushes past the ring of gunshots in his ears. “Gunshot wound.”

“Can I see some ID, please, sir?”

Tommy’s vision is fish-bowling and he grips the edge of the counter, his knuckles white. “He was shot. There was an ambulance. It’s- it’s on the news.” He glances around, his head fuzzy. “Turn on the TV, you’ll see, it’s on every channel. Jon Lovett. He runs Lovett Industries. He was-” Tommy stops turning his head and blinks. His knees feel weak. “He was shot.”

“I watch the news.” The nurse frowns at him. “If you’d just show me some ID-”

Tommy feels a hand in his back pocket and he whirls, his hands already up for a fight, but Dan just catches his elbow before he can slide to the ground. “Sorry, ma’am.” Dan flips open Tommy’s wallet with his free hand and pulls out his Lovett Industries ID card. “Here you go.”

She takes it, humming thoughtfully.

Tommy’s vision fuzzes as he narrows in on the way she flips it over. “It’s real,” he promises.

Dan tightens his fingers on Tommy’s elbow, tight against his pressure points. Tommy shivers and focuses on the sharp, grounding pain.

“I’m with the US government.” Dan hands over his special forces ID and the nurse finally, finally nods. 

She hands back both their IDs. Dan pockets both their wallets.

“Please, sirs, follow me.” She motions them down the hallway and Tommy falls into step with Dan, his eyes on the left-right, left-right of his feet. He hears the nurse say, intermittently, “apologies for the hard time” and “VIP patients, you have to understand” and “you wouldn’t imagine the crackpots who wanna get in here.”

Dan nods as they stop outside a small, locked lounge. She swipes her badge and stands back, letting them in.

“Oh, thank god.” Jon’s voice is low and thick, dripping with all the moisture that’s fled Tommy’s lungs. “Did- Tanya was supposed to call you. Did she-?”

Tommy looks blankly down at Dan’s phone still clutched in his hand. The screen is dark, but Tommy doesn’t need it anymore. The scene’s running on repeat behind his eyelids.

“We saw it on TV,” Dan says. “I should call her. Will you-?” He digs at Tommy’s elbow, pulling him towards a chair and pushing him down.

The chair is hard and unforgiving under Tommy’s thighs. It soothes him, like a cold, focusing compress against the skid marks in his mind.

Dan pries the phone out of Tommy’s fingers and says, as if very far away, “I’ll be right back.”

Tommy stares at the place Dan’s feet used to be.

Time slows. Time speeds up.

Jon breathes. Tommy tries to copy him.

He doesn’t look up until Dan’s feet are there again. Dan shoves a cup of steaming coffee into Tommy’s hands. “Drink that. Both of you.”

The coffee is foul. Tommy barely tastes it as it burns down his throat.

“And, for the love of god, sit down before they have to admit you for a concussion.”

Tommy looks up - “I’m already sitting” - but the choked off sound isn’t coming from him. Jon is paler than Tommy’s every seen him, like an eclipse has blocked out the infuriating internal sun that powers Jon’s charisma and optimism. 

Jon’s knees are trembling as he falls into the seat next to Tommy’s. Jon’s still wearing his dress pants, scuffed at the knees and all along his thigh. Where- Fuck. Where Lovett pulled him down.

“I-” Jon’s voice is a swamp. Guiltily, Tommy wants to drown himself in it. “If he- If anything happens- He saved my life.”

Dan sits across from them. Tommy stares at the well-worn knees of Dan’s jeans. His legs aren’t shaking, and Tommy pulls at that like a lifeline.

“I wasn’t there.” Tommy’s words are as desolate as the desert, and about as fruitful. He swallows, takes a sip of coffee, tries again, “I should have been there,” but the sand shifts and cracks under the weight of his guilt.

Jon reaches for his hand, locking their fingers together.

Jon’s knees shake. 

Tommy’s knees shake in the same rhythm.

***

Time passes.

Time passes and passes and passes with no meaning, until the door finally clicks open again.

The doctor looks a little tired, but she smiles at them as she enters. “Mr. Lovett’s out of surgery. It went exactly as expected. Barring complications, he should make a full recovery.”

Jon breathes, wet and uneven, and Tommy hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the sound of it. Jon pulls his hand out of Tommy's and stands on his trembling knees.

"Can we see him?"

She nods. "He'll be out for a couple hours yet, but you can go back."

Jon's halfway to the door before Tommy's even on his feet. The hallway is quiet and ill-lit, the old light-bulbs casting yellow shadows across the cracking tiles and the worry lines in Jon's forehead.

Their shoes squeak and echo down the hallway and Tommy wants to reach for Jon's hand again. But Jon doesn't slow down, doesn't look back, doesn't stop breathing, doesn't even pause at the doorway until he's at Lovett's side.

Tommy swallows in the doorway.

Lovett looks small and pale in a bed of wires. There's an IV like a lifeline in his arm and a monitor beeping the unsteady rhythm of Lovett's heartbeat. There's a bandage over the left side of his forehead and Tommy can just see the edge of the gauze peeking over the collar of his medical gown.

Lovett's curls and round cheeks flicker in Tommy's eyes, re-coalescing in Nazanin's dark, sharp cheekbones and thick braid. Jon slides his hand over Lovett's, covering his fingers, so pale and still and incongruous with the electricity that defines Lovett's brilliance. Tommy's memory supplies an image of that same hand, raised in farewell and silhouetted against the bright Iraqi sun. 

Tommy blinks and the world comes crashing back into focus. The edges of his vision sharpen around the slow and shallow exhilations of Lovett's chest. His nose flares with the smell of antiseptic and saline. He can pick out the words Jon's whispering with the precision of his military-trained hearing.

Tommy almost lost this.

Tommy's lost so many things, already.

He can't risk losing any more.

He takes a step back, turns and, with Jon's surprised "Tommy?" ringing in his ears, he starts to run.

***

Tommy has to show his ID five times before he can get through the police barricade outside Lovett Industries. The block is roped off and the entrance to the building that Tommy had just started to think of as home is crawling with the feds and the NYPD and the National Guard. Tommy flinches at the jurisdictional nightmare as he slides past all three and makes it to Tanya's side.

"Hey boss," she greets him, her voice clipped even as she grabs his elbow and pulls him through the crowd. "Fancy seeing you at work."

Tommy rubs the back of his neck. "I'm here now. I have an apology if you'd like to hear it-"

"I'd like to find the bastard," Tanya shakes her head and her fingers are soft against his arm.

"Good. Me too."

She pulls away so she can grab her tablet, burying her emotions as deep as Tommy’s are. He’s eminently grateful for it. 

She hands it over. "Here's what we have so far. It's not much, but-"

Tommy starts reading through it, quick and efficient. "It was Arch Duke?"

"No proof yet," she shrugs, "but who else?"

"Yeah." Tommy points to a square of emergency tape on the ground, just off center from the podium. "This is where the shooter was?"

She nods, leading him to the spot. Tommy stands in the tape outline, glancing around himself, squinting into the sun and looking up at the buildings on all sides of them. So many windows. He should have made Lovett move to the countryside months ago. He should have insisted on the awning. He should have imparted on Jon just _how_ legitimate the threat was so that Jon could convince Lovett to stop talking to the damn public at every opportunity.

He shields his eyes. "Was there a signal?"

Tanya shakes her head. "We don't think so." She shrugs a little gingerly. "No need for one."

"Yeah."

"So, ahh," Tanya shuffles her feet and follows Tommy’s eyes to squint up at the sun glinting off the windows. "I called Jon at the hospital, but, how is he? Really?"

Tommy's chest clenches. He fights back the flood of images. "He's going to live."

She nods. "And Jon?"

Tommy's chest clenches harder. "He's going to live, too."

She bites her lip. "He was- If Lovett hadn't-" She points along the shooter's sight line, directly to the side of the podium. "He wasn't targeting Lovett."

Tommy swallows. "Arch Duke blames Lovett for losing everything that matters to him. He wanted Lovett to know what that felt like."

Tanya sucks in a breath. "He targeted the thing Lovett cares for most."

It's not a question, but Tommy nods around the lump in his throat.

Tanya’s eyes are dark and soft for a moment, before she straightens her shoulders and nods down the alleyway next to Lovett Industries. “The cops are looking for him outside the barricades, but, what if he didn’t escape right away?”

Tommy frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Arch Duke’s been following us for a long time, right?” Tommy nods. “He’d know the protocols. If he waited-”

“And snuck out after the barricades went up?” Tommy shrugs. “Worth a look.”

Tanya leads the way into the alley. It’s a holdover from the building’s early days as a button factory and Lovett Industries uses it, sometimes, for larger deliveries. Otherwise, Tommy’s never seen anyone down it but a garbage truck.

The sun doesn’t reach this far into the buildings, and Tommy shivers as he follows behind Tanya. 

“We should get this place cleaned out,” she laughs a little, looking around at the piles of leaves and trash, blown in from the street. 

“Yeah,” Tommy agrees, squatting down to dig through the detris. “I should have gotten this taken care of a long time ago.”

“There’s nothing here of use.” Tanya sighs, wiping her hands on her jeans. “It was worth a look, though.”

“It was definitely worth a look,” Tommy assures her as he pushes off his knees to stand. “Let’s go see if we can get the cops to tell us something.”

Tanya nods, the leaves crunching under her feet as she walks. Tommy turns to follow her, and stops.

“What?” She pauses in the mouth of the alley. “Tommy, what is it?”

Tommy gets on his knees in front of the dumpster, dragging the edge of his sleeve over his hand and sliding it into the muck under the heavy metal box. He pulls out a dark hat, unmarked, but with seams in all the right places. “The hat,” he breathes.

Tanya tilts her head, unconvinced. “I know you want to catch him, but, it could be any navy hat.”

“No.” Tommy’s been playing the video on repeat - physically and mentally - for hours, and he’s committed every inch of it to photographic memory. “It’s the hat.”

He holds the hat gingerly in his hand, careful not to get his own DNA on it.

She shrugs, clearly still unsure. “We should probably hand it over, then.”

They head back into the sun to find and brief the FBI.

***

“Tommy?”

Tommy looks up from the side table he’s dragged into his office from the hallway. It’s strewn with papers. Every threat from Arch Duke - both the obvious ones and the ones Tommy’s gut is screaming are from him - mixed with printed newspaper articles about Arch Duke’s former life and the files Dan had given him.

Tommy runs a hand through his hair. It’s getting long around his ears, now that it’s not force-cut by his commanding officer. “Jon. What are you doing here?”

“Lovett needed some things.” Jon adjusts the strap of the backpack on his shoulder. He looks better than he’d looked a few hours ago. There’s some color in his cheeks; Tommy hopes that Lovett put it there. He’s pulled on a Lovett Industries sweatshirt and Pundit’s standing at his feet. She follows as he takes a ginger step into Tommy’s office and picks up a page from the top of the table. It’s heavily redacted. “Where did you get all this?”

“Arch Duke’s FBI file.” Tommy digs through the threats to pull up the couple-inch thick folder.

Jon frowns. “Where did you get his FBI file?”

“Dan gave it to me.” Tommy shrugs, flipping open the file. He shuffles through the first couple pages. “Most of it’s out of date, but, the link is here, I know it is. I just need to find it.”

“When?”

“Hmm?”

Jon crumples the page in his fingers. Pundit slides in between his ankles and rests her head on his calf. “When did Dan give this to you?”

“I don’t know.” Tommy runs his hand through his hair again. He’s getting a little shaky, he needs more coffee. “A few weeks ago.”

“Before or after I left you and Lovett in that bar? Moments from-” Jon’s face twists with something- something painful and wounded, if Tommy knows how to read him, and Tommy’s read Jon’s face a thousand times, in tragedy and in victory.

Tommy’s never seen Jon quite like this, though. He’s never seen Jon so coiled, anger simmering and bubbling right under his skin.

Tommy swallows. “Before.”

Jon nods. Like he expected it. Like it’s disappointing, nonetheless. 

“Jon-”

Jon veers a mental right, like he’s catching up to Tommy. Jon shakes his head, disgusted. “Haven’t we lost enough already?”

Like he’s caught up to Tommy. 

Tommy really needs that coffee. His fingers are shaky as he fists them against the table. “I need to find him.”

“Arch Duke, whoever he is, has already done his damage.” Anger chases the pain of the memory across Jon’s face. “Why go hunting for danger?”

“I’m not-” Tommy frowns. “I’m not _hunting_.”

“No?” Jon spreads his hands over the table. “How exactly would you describe this, then?”

“Intelligence.” Tommy feels heat rise up his spine. “To ensure that you’re not shot again.”

Jon doesn’t flinch at the snap in Tommy’s words. “Someday, you’re going to look back and realize that you were always so busy fighting, you forgot how to live.”

Tommy’s weight tips forward onto his knuckles as he pushes back the rising image of Jon’s chest, blooming with blood. If Lovett had been a moment later- If the shooter a moment faster- “He’s not gonna stop.”

Jon shakes his head. “He got what he wanted.”

Tommy’s mouth goes dry. “He didn’t.” _You’re still standing, right in front of me_. “If Lovett’s still breathing, he’ll be back,” Tommy white lies.

“He’s made his point,” Jon pushes. “He’s on the front page of every news outlet. Lovett Industries-”

“-stock prices will skyrocket when the Dow opens tomorrow.” Tommy shakes his head. “This wasn’t about money. This was about revenge. He’ll be back.”

Jon hears the _don’t be naive_ Tommy slipped between _money_ and _revenge_ , just as Tommy knew he would. “Then turn all this over to the FBI.” Jon lets the page he’s holding fall back to the table. “Let them find him. It’s their job.”

“It’s my job, Jon.” A toxic mix of anger and guilt rises up from where it’s settled in Tommy’s chest. “Lovett is my responsibility. I was supposed to keep him safe.”

“Yeah,” Jon drops his eyes. At his feet, Pundit whines. “Yeah, you should have. But, you weren’t there and getting yourself killed on a suicide mission won’t turn back time.”

Tommy flinches, his shoulders aching under the sting of truth in Jon’s words. Jon’s never known how to fight with a gun, but with words- Tommy’s never known anyone better. “I have to make it right.”

Jon stares at him, his eyes so deep Tommy could lose himself in them, if he let himself. “Your life won’t make it right.”

Tommy stares back. “Then I won’t die.”

Jon breaks first, stepping back and bending to pull Pundit into his arms. She snuffs, lifting her chin to rub at Jon’s neck. Jon’s voice breaks with the contact. “Lovett’s awake. He’s asking for you.”

Jon pauses, but Tommy doesn’t fill it. His heart is thumping as he watches Jon walk away.

He waits until Jon reaches the end of the hall, then Tommy turns back to the evidence in front of him.

***

Tommy’s vision is starting to spin - a black hole of Arch Duke’s most-used phrases and blocked-out security bars spiraling down and down and down towards a small warehouse in the Garment District - when his phone rings.

“We found him,” Dan says, before Tommy can greet him.

Tommy’s chest tightens. “The Garment District?” He guesses.

Dan’s voice comes up short and Tommy can hear his eyes narrow. “How did you know?”

“A hunch.” Tommy gathers the most relevant documents into a folder and is already reaching for his jacket. “It’s mentioned a few times. It’s his brother’s father-in-law’s place. Hasn’t been used in half a decade but the taxes are paid meticulously.”

Dan chuckles. “I’ve missed working with you.”

Tommy jogs to the elevator and out again, his phone help precariously against his ear as he waves his badge to slide past the police barricade outside Lovett Industries and flags down a taxi. “Where should I meet you?”

“Tommy-”

“Dan.”

Dan sighs. “Arch Duke is a foreign adversary. The National Guard has it under control.”

“The National Guard hasn’t been tracking his every word for the past few months,” Tommy argues. A taxi skids to a stop in front of him and he slides inside. He repeats, “where should I meet you?”

Dan has an internal argument that Tommy can hear in a series of staccato sighs, before taking a deep breath. “We’ve set up operations at the Special Ops warehouse on 6th and 35th.”

“I’ll be there in 20.”

Tommy tells the driver to drop him off a block away, then leans his head against the cool condensation on the window and stares at the phone in his hand. It’s stayed stubbornly silent since Jon confronted him in his office over twenty-four hours ago.

He thumbs it open, pulling up his text messages. He finds Jon’s name, types out, _I have to do this_. 

He switches to Lovett’s and types out _I’m sorry_.

He doesn’t send either.

The taxi rolls to a stop and Tommy powers his phone off, shoving it into his back pocket in exchange for a $20 he hands to the driver. It’s late, night long past settled over the New York skyline, and Tommy checks all directions before he jogs to the warehouse and slides inside.

Dan greets him with a helpless glare and a bulletproof vest. “Put this on. And stay out of the way.”

“I-”

“Or you don’t come at all,” Dan adds.

Tommy closes his mouth and makes a zipper motion across his lips.

Dan shakes his head but his shoulders are shaking a little as he rejoins the circle of bent heads. Tommy cranes over them to see the plan laid out on Lovett Industry tablets. Tommy’s chest aches.

***

The plan is simple.

They have the element of surprise and superior numbers. They have the cover of darkness and a team of trained soldiers, Tommy holding up the rear as he draws his gun and follows them into the unmarked warehouse.

The gun feels comfortable in Tommy’s hands. It fits, familiar and warm, in his palm and it slots, easy and uncomplicated, into the well-corn calluses of Tommy’s anger.

Arch Duke doesn’t stand a chance, but he puts up a fight, anyway.

Tommy can already hear the firefight as he enters the building. The slam and clank of Arch Duke’s guards being overpowered and handcuffed. The metallic clang of bullets ricocheting off the warehouse walls. The calm, gruff shouts of military commands. The frantic screams of Arch Duke’s crew as they try to delete the proof of his operation from the computer banks.

By the time Tommy gets into the command center, two soldiers have Arch Duke on his knees in the center of the room. The artificial lights spread sallow shadows over Arch Duke’s pale face. His hair is long and stringy, the same oily strands Tommy saw under the baseball cap. His eyes are as dark as the deepest ocean, cold and hollow.

Arch Duke struggles and one of the officers pulls him to the ground, twisting his shoulders back. Arch Duke is trained, though, and he strains against the hold.

Tommy sees Arch Duke’s left hand slide out of the officer’s grip and he’s across the room before he can stop himself. He slides to the dusty floor, pressing his knee onto Arch Duke’s chest and holding him down.

“I know you,” Arch Duke sneers. “You work for the traitor.”

Tommy leans his weight on his knee as the officers pulls Arch Duke’s hands over his head and handcuffs him. Tommy leans down. “Yeah, I do.”

Arch Duke spits, but Tommy pulls back before it reaches him. “That makes you a traitor, too.”

“I’ve served my country,” Tommy tells him. “As has Jon Lovett. Admirably.”

Arch Duke’s voice slides around a Jewish slur and Tommy abandons his gun in favor of balling his fingers into a fist.

“Lovett is more of a patriot than you can ever dream of being,” Tommy growls as Arch Duke’s cheekbone cracks under the force of Tommy’s hand.

Arch Duke’s eyes glint and he opens his mouth again. Tommy holds back his fist-

And his wrist is caught. “Tommy.” Dan’s voice is gruff as he wraps a strong arm around Tommy’s chest, pulling him bodily off of Arch Duke’s prone form. Tommy’s knees are shaking, but he struggles away from Dan, taking a step back towards the center of the room as Dan pushes at him with both his palms.

“Jesus christ, Tommy. I should fucking court marshall you.”

Tommy glares at him. His fist is smarting and he cradles it to his chest. “I’m not under military rule anymore.”

“This is a military operation.” Dan glares right back, meeting Tommy word for word.

“To catch a criminal who breached _my_ security,” Tommy mutters, trying to peer over Dan’s shoulder. Four officers have Arch Duke tied up, now. There’s blood on his chin and shirt.

Dan snorts. “Your security?”

Tommy lifts his chin, defying Dan to contradict him.

Dan sighs, deeply, with his nose. “Go. Be where you need to be. We’ve got it from here.”

Tommy doesn’t wait.

***

NewYork Presbyterian is dark this late at night and Tommy has to pull every string he has left to be let up to the seventh floor.

There’s a light on in Lovett’s room, though, and Tommy can hear his rant on green versus blue jello before he’s halfway down the hallway. He jogs the rest of the way, until he hits the invisible wall of Lovett’s doorway.

Lovett’s sitting up in bed, his face still pale but his curls clean and wet around his ears. His right hand is grasped in Jon’s, but he’s talking with his left. He’s punctuating a point, his hand a foot and a half off the bed, when he freezes.

“You’re bleeding,” Lovett says, breaking off mid-sentence.

Jon turns around, tipping into Lovett’s bed and catching himself against the mattress. Lovett flinches as his bed jostles.

Tommy looks down at his fist, still sore and held gingerly against his chest. His knuckles are spattered with blood. “It’s not mine.”

Jon frowns. “Whose is it?”

Lovett groans. “Is this some barbarian, head-on-a-stick bullshit?”

“It’s Arch Duke’s,” Tommy says, steadily, waring between the rising horror and resignation on Jon’s face and the relief he feels in his own chest. “We got him. He’s in custody.”

“The National Guard was handling it.” It’s not a question. Jon knows not to ask Tommy questions he won’t like the answer to.

Tommy shrugs, anyway. “Dan called. I went with them.”

Lovett frowns at him. “Voluntarily?”

“I had to be sure.” Tommy takes two steps into the room, to the foot of Lovett’s bed. He reaches out, but stops just shy of Lovett’s ankle. “He can’t hurt you ever again.”

Jon’s eyes narrow. “Because your civilian-fist punching him is more important than the entire military guard tasked with ensuring his captivity.”

“It was,” Tommy says, sincerely. He glances down at his fist, flexing his fingers experimentally. He braces for the memories to come. Of Nazanin. Of Jon. Of Lovett. His mind stays blessedly blank. “For me, for … us, it was, yes.”

Jon takes a deep breath. Tommy watches the pull of his chest under his dark henley. “How pissed is Dan at you right now?”

Tommy shrugs. “You’d have to ask him.” He looks at Lovett’s toes under the thin hospital blankets and doesn’t meet Jon’s eyes.

Jon chuckles darkly.

Lovett groans and leans his head back against the pillows. “This is why I hate you military types.”

“Well.” Tommy slits his eyes. “When us military types leave you alone for a second you get shot.”

Lovett raises his head again, trying to cross his arms over his chest. He winces and drops his hands into his lap, picking at the blanket as his eyes drift to Jon and back. “Someone had to.”

Tommy growls. The memory reflex may have faded, but the guilt is still clawing at his ankles, only a few short steps back. “No one should have had to.”

“Maybe not. Maybe if you had been there-” Lovett cuts himself off, his eyes widening as if his own words surprised himself.

Next to him, Jon’s fingers tense, like he wants to reach out. For Lovett or for Tommy, Tommy can’t be sure.

Tommy doesn’t flinch and he doesn’t look away. “You think I don’t know that?”

“It was my fault.” Lovett whispers. “It was my fault you weren’t there. It was my fault-” Lovett tilts his entire head towards Jon.

“Hey,” Jon whispers, finishing his movement and reaching into Lovett’s lap to slide their fingers together. “I’m here. You’re an egotistical idiot with a martyr complex, but you saved me.”

Lovett chuckles wetly, glancing away. He doesn’t pull his hand from Jon’s.

Tommy’s chest aches. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says, fiercely. “It was me. I- I should have been there. You hired me to be there. You hired me to keep you safe, not to-” Tommy trails off before he can say something incredibly stupid.

“I turned you away.” Lovett shrugs. Tommy can see how white Jon’s knuckles are in Lovett’s grasp as Lovett looks up, catching Tommy’s eyes. “I’m not the man you thought I was. I- I didn’t get to apologize for that.”

Tommy’s eyes are hot as he leans forward, his hand finally, finally dropping to squeeze Lovett’s ankle. “I should have been there,” he repeats, his voice low and rough.

Lovett shakes his head, his voice just as shaky. “Tommy-”

“I’m sorry,” Tommy pleads.

“I’m-” Lovett swallows. His voice is wet and deep as quicksand. “Can you ever forgive me?”

Tommy shivers under the force of his gaze. “Can you forgive _me_?”

Lovett snorts, even the arch of his shoulders self-deprecating. “I warned you from the very beginning. I’m not an easy man to-” He cuts himself off, in the same place, Tommy hopes, that Tommy had, himself, a moment before.

“I don’t know,” Tommy says, thoughtfully. He takes a step forward, trailing his fingers from Lovett’s ankle, up his calf. “I think you’re a pretty easy man to care for. About.”

Jon lets out a shaky breath. “Oh, thank god.”

Lovett reaches for Tommy’s hand with his free one, his thumb running across Tommy’s bruised knuckles. “No more lives on my hands, okay? I have enough to last me ten lifetimes.”

“Yeah,” Tommy breathes. “Me too.”

Lovett reads the play of feelings across Tommy’s face, then tugs at his hand. “So, are you going to kiss me, or-?”

Tommy laughs and, reaching for Jon’s free hand, leans forward.

***

“No, no. Don’t be- That’s stupid. A plane can’t drop thirty tons of aid packages if it’s just running on ethanol. It’s simple math,” Lovett’s voice echoes through the hallway.

Tommy grins at Elijah as he stops in front of his desk. He hands over a donut from the place Lovett likes, a few blocks from the office. “They’re still arguing about this?”

Elijah takes the donut gratefully. “Have been for hours.”

“I know.” Tommy laughs. “They started in bed this morning.”

Elijah frowns, the edge of his nose crinkling. “That’s really more-”

“-than you need to know about our home life?” Tommy supplies. “I know.” He grabs the fourth coffee in his holder, the cup he’d originally marked for Tanya, and hands it over apologetically. Elijah needs it more than Tanya does anyway, these days, judging by the way he takes it, gratefully.

“You’re terrorizing your staff,” Tommy says, closing the door behind him as he enters. His grin softens as he sees Lovett strewn across the couch, the bandage still visible under his thin t-shirt and his legs spread over Jon’s lap.

Jon lifts his head for a kiss, which Tommy grants easily.

“Besides,” Tommy continues, as he sits on the edge of the coffee table in front of them and hands over their coffees and holds out the box of donuts, “if you drop the top of the plane to a 33 degree angle, you can add solar panels and-”

“Oh.” Lovett eyes light up and he thrusts the box of donuts into Jon’s hands. Tommy reaches out, automatically offering his arm for support. Lovett groans, ignoring Tommy’s proffered arm as he leans down to press a kiss to the top of Tommy’s head. “You’re brilliant. I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”

“Because he keeps you alive?” Jon offers, sharing an exasperated look with Tommy.

“Sure,” Lovett says, easily. Then his voice drops, deep and dreamy. “But, also, he knows _math_.”

“I’m offended.” Jon looks from Lovett to Tommy. “Should I be offended?”

Tommy squeezes his knee.

Lovett waves him away, already frowning at his whiteboard. “There’s other things I love about you.”

Tommy’s chest aches, the way it always does when Lovett throws the sentiment away like that. Like it’s easy. Like Tommy hadn’t chased love across the globe, through bombs and death threats, in dreams and nightmares, for years and years and in mirages and false starts, until he finally caught up to it.

Jon threads his fingers through Tommy’s and squeezes. He smiles, bright as the sun glinting off the Iraqi sand and the New York City skyscrapers, when Tommy looks at him. “Thanks for the coffee.”

Tommy laughs, and if it comes out a little choked, neither Jon nor Lovett mention it. “I figured we’d need it, before the press lambasts us during this Q and A.”

“Fuck.” Lovett’s hand freezes against the whiteboard. “The speech.”

Jon snorts and pulls away from Tommy, reaching for his tablet. “I made those changes you suggested.”

“Yeah,” Lovett says, absently. He wipes away the front of the plane design and redraws the nose at the angle Tommy suggested. His shoulders are tight. “Yeah, okay.”

“Hey,” Tommy says, quietly. “Lovett-”

“I’m not gonna get shot again, right? The odds of getting shot once are tiny. The odds of getting shot twice are astronomical. It’s just statistics. Right?” Lovett asks as he caps his marker and puts it down. He crosses back to the couch, falling onto the cushion a few feet from Jon, and doesn’t meet their eyes.

Jon reaches for his hand and Tommy grabs the box he’s brought with him. “I got you something.”

Lovett frowns. “For the speech?”

Tommy shrugs. “For my piece of mind.”

Lovett takes the box and opens it, slowly. He laughs when he pulls out the bulletproof vest and traces over the ‘fuck war’ Tommy had embroidered on the front. He sets it in his lap, swallowing wetly. “I was wearing one, you know? Just like you asked me too.”

Jon flinches. Tommy slides his foot forward to press their ankles together.

“I know,” Tommy whispers. “It saved your life.”

Lovett shakes his head. “You saved my life.”

Jon makes a pained noise and Lovett reaches out to kiss him, long and beautiful and so much more than Tommy had ever thought he’d get or deserve. Lovett’s hand slides into Tommy’s lap, threading their fingers together.

They don’t break apart until Elijah knocks on the door and clears his throat. “Sorry, ahh, sorry to interrupt. But-”

“Speech. Right.” Lovett straightens his shoulders. He slides the vest over his head, lifting his arms gingerly and letting Jon and Tommy do up the sides. He zips his winter jacket over it, and stands. “Okay, I’m ready.”

They pile into the elevator, Elijah and Tanya falling into step beside them. Jon doesn’t let go of Lovett or Tommy’s hands until the door chimes open.

Lovett drops them as he steps out, but stops just short of the main door to Lovett Industries. “First time is the hardest, right?”

“Always,” Tommy promises him.

“Yeah.” Lovett tugs him closer, kissing him, slow and gentle, before turning to Jon and doing the same. “Okay, the press will wait for no man.”

Lovett steps out onto the podium, with the early winter sun beating down on his head, Jon and Tommy at his sides.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! I'll add my tumblr once authors have been revealed :)


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